Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Your Competitors Don't Understand

FIRST THINGS FIRST: THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Before we dive into the dos and don’ts of using social media to craft a phenomenal customer experience for someone who is not like you, it’s important that we cover some of the essential points about how businesses today use social media to build and enhance customer relationships.

The term social media refers to an all-inclusive category encompassing a number of web-based and mobile technologies that create interaction, either between individual people or between people and a brand or company. The social designation is based on people’s ability to connect and correspond with one another or with an organization; it includes applications such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, as well as blogs, videos (YouTube), and other online communities.

Social media provides a valuable, effective, and low-cost way for companies to listen to existing and future customers, respond to their needs and concerns, and develop solutions or services that may not already exist. Although social media initially attracted a young, tech-savvy audience, they’re no longer the only ones getting in on the action. A recent report by the Pew Research Center revealed that half of the social network users in the United States are older than age 35. Even if you are not using social media, personally or professionally, you must not dismiss it. It’s the biggest thing to happen to business—and culture—since the Internet.

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