Turn Negative Social Media Feedback into a Customer Service Opportunity

By now, few companies haven’t been inundated with articles, anecdotes and myriad information resources insisting on the undeniable importance of social media to doing business. Not all businesses have been quick to buy into the hype. It can be difficult to embrace a whole new world of digital interactions with customers after years of cultivating best practices with more traditional methods. There are ample benefits to developing and maintaining a social media presence, but perhaps more importantly, there can be serious consequences to ignoring social media.

Word of mouth has long been one of the most trusted methods for customers deciding which businesses to seek out and which to avoid. Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and the various other social media outlets have changed the meaning of "word of mouth" by vastly increasing the audience that any one person has influence over. An unhappy customer no longer just complains to friends and family members – they have the power to broadcast their discontent to a large group of distant acquaintances and strangers. If these very public complaints are ignored, people will notice. Worse, if competitors are doing a better job of responding on social media, a company will fall even further in customers’ estimation by comparison.

This may all sound intimidating, but there is a silver lining. The flip side of the public nature of customer complaints in social media is that the company’s response is also public. Every time a representative responds quickly and helpfully to a disgruntled customer on social media, others see it.

How can a company turn a potentially negative social media experience into an opportunity to demonstrate exceptional customer service?


Have a Strategy – Have a plan in place to monitor mentions of the company in social media and respond in a timely manner.


Respond Quickly, but not Carelessly – The lifecycle of social media is fast, but not so fast that responses should be rushed. Take the time to craft the right response, keeping in mind the best tone to take to avoid escalating the issue.


Be Active Daily – Keep interest in the account fresh with regular updates. Whenever company feedback appears, aim to respond within an hour and definitely respond within a day.


Create Official Social Media Guidelines – Make sure employees know that use of profanity and sexist or racist language is forbidden and talk of religion or politics should generally be avoided. Be aware of competitors to avoid re-tweeting or linking to.


Put Someone Trustworthy and Experienced in Charge – It can be tempting to hand the company’s social media account over to an intern, but the risk in doing so is high. Any misstep in social media will be very public and especially controversial mistakes will likely spread further faster than attempts to correct them.


Do Not Try to Silence People – Probably the best way to make an issue worse is to pretend it’s not happening by deleting messages. Angry customers won’t just go away, they’ll get louder and have even more to complain about.


Enjoy the Free Feedback – Complaints might look bad, but as often as not, they offer suggestions for ways the company can improve.

One of the main reasons to take a professional interest in social media is to avoid the consequences of ignoring unhappy customers, but there’s no reason not to take advantage of the benefits as well. Just as social media amplifies the voices of the unsatisfied, it also gives a bigger platform to the happy customers eager to share their good experiences. It makes it easy to identify regular, loyal customers and express gratitude or reward them with special deals. If a customer service strategy neglects social media, it means many missed opportunities.

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Tip of the Week: Using the Mojo Widgets to Track Customer Satisfaction

The Mojo Number can be very helpful in identifying the team members that are providing superior customer service and the ones that need a bit more mentoring. For support representatives, it provides feedback on their performance.

To make it easier to monitor your Mojo rating, there are 2 different widgets that either place your Mojo Number on your Google Personalized Homepage or your desktop.

Google Gadget
The Google Gadget allows staff to place their own Mojo rating on their Google Personalized Homepage. Helpdesk owners can add multiple instances of the gadget to their Google Homepage and use it to monitor their team's satisfaction ratings.

To add the gadget to your Google Personalized Homepage:

1. Click the My Mojo star to go to the My Mojo page.
2. Click the "Add to Google" button on the left side of the page.
3. Then, click the blue "Add Mojo Helpdesk to iGoogle" button, which will take you to your iGoogle page with the Mojo Helpdesk gadget added to it.
4. You'll need to enter your Access Key to connect the widget to your helpdesk account. This can be found on your profile page at the very bottom.
5. Once added, your Mojo Number will be viewable from your iGoogle page.

Yahoo Widget

Install the Yahoo Widget if you would prefer to display your Mojo Number on your desktop.

1. Go to http://widgets.yahoo.com/download/ to download the Yahoo Widget Engine. 
2. Then download the Mojo Helpdesk Widget from Yahoo here: http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/view.php?widget=40068. 
3. Once downloaded, you will need to configure the widget. First enter the URL used to access your helpdesk in the "Domain" field. For example, if you access your helpdesk by visiting: http://my-support.mojohelpdesk.com, that is what you would enter. 
4. Enter your access key found in your Mojo Helpdesk user profile into the Access Key field. 
5. Now you can view your Mojo Number on your desktop.

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How to Pick the Right Help Desk Software

The business landscape is overrun with products promising solutions for a better-run business. A good sales pitch or impressive idea might tempt a company to purchase a product that fails to satisfy their needs. A help desk is supposed to bring greater organization to business operations, improve communication with customers and within the department, and aid in collecting feedback and rewarding good work. Once a business has identified their needs, the first step is taken care of; the next step is figuring out which help desk best fits those needs.

Chances are, any business dependent on internet, e-mail and other computer-based tools, has a technical support department that is swamped. Every time the company decides to implement new software or purchase a new program, those in nearby departments are likely to hear audible groans from the IT staff. Opting for a cloud based help desk is likely to solicit gratitude from the IT department. Cloud based products save IT time, take up zero additional space on the company server and don’t require internal backup.

The more complicated a help desk is, the more likely the company is to devote excessive time and energy to teaching employees to use it—possibly to little effect.  People are more likely to embrace something they can understand in less than 15 minutes. Sometimes features that look exciting during the sales process are largely unnecessary in practice. Don’t just go for the help desk with the most bells and whistles, keep in mind ease of use and focus on identifying the features most  useful to the customer service staff.

A business looking to reduce repetitive tasks like assigning every customer inquiry to a representative should look for a help desk that automates those practices. If employees use different types of computers, it's important to find one that works on multiple platforms. Want to set up a system to encourage and track progress? Find a help desk that lets users rate their customer service experience and tracks how long it takes to resolve an inquiry. For a business that values corporate branding on everything it does, be sure to find one that allows for customization. These are just a few ways help desk features can aid a business. Think about your company’s needs and preferences and how a help desk can be applied to them before looking for the best solution.

Many companies will want a product that allows them to organize and view data in reports or programs they already utilize. Pay attention to what formats a help desk supports for reporting. If a company prefers its own proprietary methods and software, a help desk that supports a Developer API can help with ensuring greater integration.

Getting a better sense of what to look for in a help desk? There’s no reason to make a final decision until confident you’ve found the right fit. Take advantage of a free trial to make sure the help desk you choose satisfies your company’s needs. Putting the help desk to the test should be enough to make sure the business finds the right help desk software.

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Tip of the Week: Bypass the Google/Yahoo Sign-On By Adding a Login to Your Portal Homepage

We made it easy for users to login to Mojo Helpdesk by providing single sign-on through Google and Yahoo. For many companies this is a welcomed feature. However, some companies prefer avoiding this as it requires users to login with their Gmail or Yahoo account.  We have a solution for anyone wanting to avoid the Google/Yahoo sign-on. By placing a login form on the homepage of the customer portal, you can encourage your staff to avoid using the single sign-on when logging into the helpdesk.

To add this feature to your customer portal, you will need owner/admin access to your helpdesk. Select All Settings from the Manage menu and then click Configure Mojo Helpdesk from the Helpdesk Owner/Admins column. Then, from the Helpdesk Settings page, click the change button. We are going to be editing the Portal Home, which can be found in the Customer Portal Customization section, by adding some code that will insert the login form. Take some time to look at your portal home page and decide where you want the form to be. For this example, we're going to put it at the top of the page so it's the first thing people see.

Insert the following bit of code into the Portal Home section, replacing the two mentions of yoursiteaddress (text in red) with the site address for your help desk. If you have a custom domain,  you'll need to replace the entire url  with your custom domain. For example, in this situation, Metadot has a custom domain, so we used: https://support.metadot.com/login for the form action and https://support.metadot.com for the input value.

<div class="box_content_default square_box_message box_padding_10" width="100%">
<form action="https://yoursiteaddress.mojohelpdesk.com/login" id="login_form" method="post">
<table border="0">
       <input id="account_site_address" name="account[site_address]" value="yoursiteaddress" type="hidden">
<tbody><tr>
<th nowrap align="right"><label for="login_email_address">Email Address:</label></th>
<td align="left"><input id="user_email" name="user[email]" size="30" type="text"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right"><label for="login_password">Password:</label></th>
<td align="left"><input id="user_password" name="user[password]" size="30" type="password"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="left">&nbsp;</th>
<td align="left"><input id="remember_me_enabled" name="remember_me[enabled]" value="1" type="checkbox"><input name="remember_me[enabled]" type="hidden"><label for="remember_me_enabled">remember me on this computer</label></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right">&nbsp;</th>
<td class="controls">
 <input alt="For your security, we use encryption to protect your password." class="button" name="commit" title="For your security, we use encryption to protect your password." value="login securely" type="submit">
 <a href="/login/request_password">I forgot my password</a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</form>
</div>

Once you have the code personalized and placed in the Portal Home section, click save to push the changes live. You're portal home will now look like this:

Now you can encourage your people to login through this form and avoid the Google/Yahoo single sign-on.

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A Valentine's Gift from Mojo Helpdesk

We love our customers and as a thanks for your support, we'd like to present you with a special gift. Use the promo code below when you upgrade your account to the Enterprise Plan or higher and receive half off the first month. This offer is also good for new customers signing up for the Enterprise Plan or higher. Act now as the code expires Feb 22, 2012. Promo code: VAL2012 You account will be credited the discount after upgrade or signup. Happy Valentine's Day! The Mojo Helpdesk Team

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Find the Perfect Fit: How to Hire a First-Rate Customer Service Team

A business that tries all the tools and tricks available for improving customer service, will inevitably learn that the success of those tools depends on the quality of the staff implementing them. Finding the right customer service staff can be the hardest step in developing a business that customers rave about, but when it's done right the payoff will be huge. The customer service staff is the primary face and voice of the business to the group of people most important to its continued success: its customers. When staffing your customer service department don’t just look for the qualified, seek out the exceptional.

First, develop a clear idea of the job your representatives will perform. Get a sense of the kind of person, in terms of personality and experience, that can best fill the company’s needs in this position. While it’s useful to have a clear vision of the ideal rep, don’t limit your hiring process if all of several ideal criteria don't perfectly match your expectations. Allowing some flexibility can lead to even better results, with the right candidates. Think about the current business culture and the personality types already present, a staff that works well together without conflict saves untold amounts of time and effort and makes for a more positive work environment. Keep all of this in mind when crafting the job ad.

Once candidates are chosen for consideration, do the research. A resume and interview can be revealing, but only tell a partial story. Call the candidates’ references with a list of prepared questions to get a more thorough sense of the person’s reliability, strengths, weaknesses, general approach to life-- anything relevant to how they’ll perform the job and fit in with the company. During the interview, provide some customer service hypotheticals, ideally taken from actual experiences within the company. This is a great opportunity to test how well they think on their feet and their penchant for problem solving. Another possibility is to include current employees in the hiring process. Not only can they field potentials for a personality fit, but they can also use their experience to weed out any candidates that may not cut it from a performance perspective.

Found some promising candidates, but not quite ready to commit? Try them out on a temporary basis. Strike a deal to have them start the job with a 30-90 day evaluation period to see if they and the company are a good fit. Once the trial period’s up, if you’ve decided against a job offer, be sure to offer thorough feedback to them on why you feel it’s not a good fit and consider providing a reference to help them with future opportunities.

Be willing to make the position competitive. If the pay and benefits offered are sub par, the candidates attracted to the job will follow suit. If a high quality, highly motivated staff that’s excited to represent the company is the goal, it is imperative that the company earn the best candidates through high pay, quality benefits and a business atmosphere that’s exciting. Job performance has a tendency to reflect employee experience and the initial job offer will help to set the tone for the relationship to come.

It’s not easy to turn down hopeful and qualified candidates in the search to find the perfect employee, but building the customer service staff that’s just right for your business has to be priority number one. Trust your instincts, combined with the proper due diligence, they will lead the business to a first-rate customer service team. Once there, it’s time to move on to the far easier task of equipping them with the best customer service products available to perform to their full potential.

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Tip of the Week: Don't Forget Daily Backups

Accidents can happen to your data. The key is to be prepared so that if they do occur, it’s easy to undo the damage. Although Mojo Helpdesk provides caution messages where and when mass deletion is about to occur, it is still likely that someone in a hurry might not heed the warning. We wouldn’t want to see Mojo customers accidentally delete a mass of users and all the tickets associated with those users. Recovering from a mistake of this magnitude could be expensive and time consuming, so it’s best to be pro-active and take advantage of the easy export function Mojo Helpdesk offers.

We highly recommend all help desks utilize daily exports to protect their data. It's simple and something that should be added to your daily tasks. To backup your tickets, go to the all settings link at the top of the page.

In order to export the data you'll need at least manager level access to your help desk. From the settings page, select the Export link in the Managers column. You have the option to export all of your helpdesk users, and all the tickets or events by date range.

We recommend you backup everything, but at the least backup your users and tickets. In both cases, once you click the button, you'll be emailed the data you requested. We suggest you keep a file in your email of this data and empty it out monthly. It only takes a minute to do and you'll be grateful you did if you ever have an accident that results in data loss.

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How to Make Sure Employees Use a New Helpdesk

To get the best possible return on investment with a new helpdesk, it’s important to be proactive in encouraging employees to use it. A little effort in the early days of implementation can make all the difference in whether employees reap the benefits of the helpdesk or fail to embrace it. It’s human nature to resist change. People develop their own methods of doing things and often prefer sticking with what’s comfortable. If a new helpdesk goes unused, it can result in wasted money, squandered good intentions, and most importantly, a lack of progress. To encourage use and avoid wasted potential, consider these 5 tips for getting the most out of a new helpdesk:

1. Emphasize the Benefits
Mojo Helpdesk is designed to make work easier and more rewarding for representatives. Showcase how a simplified process for documenting each customer correspondence helps to track individual responsibilities, identify and handle issues as they occur. Mojo Helpdesk encourages customers to rate their experiences, so great work is noticed and rewarded. Managers don't always know when customers are receiving exceptional service; Mojo Helpdesk makes sure they hear about it.

2. Give Tutorials
Learning a daunting new software is the last thing most employees want to add to their lengthy to do list. A simple 15-25 minute tutorial both makes what was daunting seem simple and makes employees aware of time-saving, helpful features they might have missed otherwise. As an extra touch, include refreshments. People are more eager to participate in training if pizza, sodas, or cookies are provided.

3. Discuss Possible Concerns 
Talk to employees about any doubts they have and point out specific features to alleviate concerns. If they’re worried using the helpdesk will make interactions less personal, show how it allows for direct communication between customers and representatives and makes sure customers work with the same contact until their issue is resolved. If they’re worried it will slow them down, demonstrate how automations and ticket centralization can save time. Allot time after training to allow for a Q&A session. This encourages employees to better understand the software and lose their hesitations.

4. Find Ways to Incorporate Familiar Methods
People will more readily accept a productive shift in the way things are done than a complete transformation. Find out the practices employees have found the most beneficial and determine how best to incorporate those into use of the helpdesk. The helpdesk doesn’t require you to reinvent the wheel, it merely provides the tools to make a better version of it.

5. Track and Publicize Success Stories
After efforts focused on the above points, there may still be some resistant employees unwilling to switch to a new help desk system. Track the progress of those using it and share their success stories with the company. A monthly e-mail that highlights some of the successful experiences with the helpdesk can help illustrate the many benefits

Just as resistance to change is predictable, so is the likelihood that in time people become used to new methods and begin to prefer them to the old. Once employees begin using Mojo Helpdesk, they’ll quickly become comfortable in the newer, better work processes it enables.

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Tip of the Week: Creating Custom Fields for Your Ticket Form

If you haven’t done so already, creating custom fields for your ticket form in Mojo Helpdesk is a simple and effective way to improve efficiency by requesting exactly the information needed when a customer contacts you about an issue. It can also be used to make your help desk work for your specific needs if you are using your helpdesk for less traditional uses, like tracking internal projects and project requirements.

To edit your ticket form, go to manage and select Ticket Form from the drop-down menu.

When you reach the Ticket Form page, you will see a list of fields already created. Several of these are marked as ‘system’ in the type column, meaning they are required and cannot be deleted. You can edit the label that submitters see if you would prefer something different. Simply click the edit link in the Actions column and you can edit the label, whether the end-user can see it and/or edit it, if the field is required for submission, a default value for the field, and a help message if you need to explain what is needed in the field.

To create a new field for your form, click the new ticket field button.
The first value to set is the type of field you want. There are six options to choose from:

• One line text
• Multi-line text
• Drop-down list
• Numeric
• Decimal
• Checkbox

Depending on the kind of response you expect from customers, pick the proper field type for your form. Click the next button to create the name and options for the custom field. One setting to be careful with is the system name, which is used in the data tables for pulling data or generating reports. If you aren’t certain on what system name to use, click generate to have Mojo create one for you. When you are finished, click the create custom field button to save your field and add it to the list of ticket fields.

You’ll return to the list of ticket fields where you can reorder the form fields if you want from the reorder form fields link above the chart. You can also disable any fields you don’t want by clicking the disable link in the Actions column.

Simple as that, you’ve improved your ticket form so customers will provide exactly the information you need to help them fast.

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