Customers start using soc-med to air complaints

JAKARTA. Although Indonesian customers still largely rely on agent phone support and text messaging for customer relationships, they have begun to actively adopt social channels and new technology to vent their disappointment, new research reveals.

The research, conducted by global provider of customer management solutions, the Convergys Corporation, showed that most of the Indonesian banking and telecommunication services customers surveyed called agents (74%) and sent text messages (40%) to deal with customer care-related issues.

However, according to the findings, other new channels, including social media sites (11%), websites (10%), email (10%), mobile applications (10%) and web chat (1%), were also being utilized to interact with the companies providing the services.

“It’s clear that consumers are adopting these technologies to reach out to companies. They still prefer traditional methods but we think this will change over time, especially as companies make it easier to use these new methods,” said Benjamin Hart, Convergys Asia Pacific’s vice president, during the presentation of the survey in Jakarta recently.

Convergys’ Customer Scorecard Research, conducted in Indonesia, spoke with 300 individuals who had various customer experiences in the six months prior to the survey being carried out in the first quarter of this year. The respondents, located in Jakarta and Surabaya, were aged between 18 and 54 and were contacted by phone.

Convergys’ research also suggested that 73% of Indonesian customers already used new interaction channels and technologies, including social media accounts, smartphones and tablets.

The use of social media among those surveyed was widespread with 68% of respondents having Facebook or Twitter accounts. Around 25% of respondents used mobile applications and about 33% of them deployed social media to interact with customer care staff in the last six months, following 62% who used text messages.

Hart estimated that the figure for social media and new technology would grow in the future, and therefore, companies would need to adjust their strategies, particularly promoting certain social media strategies, to address this issue. He recommended companies should appoint a special social media representative who could monitor and respond to customer concerns and complaints as one possible solution.

“The impact of complaining via social media will be far greater than complaining to friends or colleagues, especially if Indonesia continues to see the use of these channels increasing,” Hart said.

Banks and telcos provide new channels

Previous Convergys research in the US and the UK suggested that the “millennial generation” was more likely than other generations to share their bad service experiences via social media sites or texting. Customers discuss their experiences on social media, especially if they are not satisfied with the service. Negative social media posts could result in lost business, not only from the person posting a negative opinion, but also from others who read it, according to the firm.

Indonesia’s major banks and telecommunication operators said they were trying to cater to the latest trends by providing new channels for customer service.

Indonesia’s major bank CIMB Niaga, for example, provided social media accounts — Twitter and Facebook — to receive suggestions or complaints conveyed by its customers, as it predicted the growing use of social media, according to corporate secretary Harsya Denny Suryo, who acknowledged that currently the bank’s customers predominantly utilized telephone and email to contact customer care support.

“By adopting the new facilities, we hope our customers can convey their complaints quickly and easily. We already have a special standard operating procedure to handle customer complaints, including via social media,” he said.

Ricardo Indra, head of corporate communications at Indonesia’s largest mobile phone operator Telkomsel, said that at present customers primarily utilized social media and its website to contact customer care or find information about products rather than by phone or text message.

“The number of customers contacting customer care through social media has risen significantly this year. Transactions via Twitter have jumped by 1.415% compared to last year, while those via Facebook have risen by 2.497%,” he said, adding that transactions through WEBTcare had also increased by 225% from a year earlier.

Ricardo said Telkomsel greatly benefited from social media and website communication because suggestions as well as complaints from customers could be addressed in real time as soon as they were submitted.