Yesterday, we talked about how your field service business needs to deliver happiness or run the risk of losing customers to your competition. Today, we'll show you the fun part - how to leverage Twitter to do it.
But first, a brief history of the universe. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2010, more data was created in the past 48 hours than from the dawn of time until 2003. Think about that for a second. How can that be? It's simple - the proliferation of Facebook alone means that just about any thought that one of its nearly one billion members has can be shared and added to the pool of created data. And, much to my chagrin sometimes when I browse Twitter and learn that my friend just clipped his toenails, most users add a ton of useless information to that data pool.
But not all of it is junk. That information is a mountain that you can mine to improve your customer relationships.
Let's use an example from the here and now: Pretend you have a customer named Barry. Barry wants you to install a fence. So you visit him, talk to him, see where he wants the fence, and you send your crew out to install the fence. When you're done, you send him an invoice.
You did a great job. You got paid. Hopefully you turned a profit. But is your customer truly happy? So happy that he'll recommend you to others? So happy that you've made a lifelong customer?
If not, you've failed.
Learn More. Deliver More.
Which is where social media comes in. Let's pretend when Barry contacted you to talk about installing his fence, he did so by email. Aha! You've now got a key piece of information that can help you deliver unexpected happiness to Barry.
You can leverage that e-mail address to see if Barry is on Twitter. He is. And he's active. Barry has about 400 followers, too. You spend some time reading Barry's tweets and find out he's a diehard Green Bay Packer fan. Now you've got a piece of information you can leverage to bring a smile to Barry's face.
You install the fence. A week later, you send Barry a bunch of fence post caps shaped like Packer helmets. You send him a tweet on the day they deliver that says "@barry - Hope you like the helmets on your new fence."
Barry tweets you back a picture of him smiling next to the post caps. And, since it's public, you've just been introduced to all 400 of his followers. That's 400 potential buyers.
And now you're sarcastically thinking "Right. Because all of my customers are on Twitter." You're right, they're not. I recently did an analysis of our database and found that I could find less than 1% of them on Twitter. And not many of those less than 1% are actually active. But even if they only have 5 or 10 tweets, just by reading those tweets, their bio and who they follow, you can typically get a good idea of who they are, what interests them and how you can personalize their experience with you so that they love you.
You’re probably thinking “That’s a lot of work for less than 1% of my customers.” Is it? Barry is so darn proud of his fence post caps that he talks about them every time his friends visit. 75% of the time, he mentions your fence installation company. Heck, he even told the UPS delivery guy about them – and about you.
That’s a significant word of mouth campaign that took a couple minutes of your time. And some money that you, smartly, built into your initial estimate.
The bottom line: Social media can help you learn a ton about your customers. By leveraging that information, you can create personalized experiences that leave your customers raving about you.
And, while you’re diving into social media, don’t forget to follow HindSite by using the links to the right of this post. We try to post multiple links daily that help you manage and grow your field service business. Follow us and let us know what you think!