Peer-To-Peer: To Trust or Not?

So last semester during finals week my computer charger broke. Or should I say, fried? Leave it up to me to not have a working computer during one of the most important weeks of the semester. Being a broke college student, I decided to search Amazon for a (knock off) Mac Book Pro charger. I’m not (in the least bit) a technologically savvy person. So what did I do? I decided to look at customer reviews to decide which charger I would purchase.

 

Why would I trust strangers rather than store employees? Maybe it’s because I feel like they’re honest and not biased, or maybe I like stories of personal experience. Regardless, I (along with many others) trust my peers when it comes to purchasing products online.

Chapter five of Delivering Effective Social Customer Service dives into the topic of peer-to-peer support. When companies allow customers to ‘be a part of the company,’ it can be glorious.

Here are some statistics for those of you who like numbers:

• ·      On average over 40% of customers resolve their issues in the online community
• ·      This equated to an overall reduction of 15%+ of all service cases
• ·      The average ROI was 100% within 15 months

*These statistics can be found on page 130.

OK, those stats are pretty impressive! Online presence is increasing and you better be able to keep up.

Moving on, “peer-to-peer support should be the backbone of your Social Customer Service strategy…your presence on social networks becomes secondary,” (p. 131). This may be hard to choke down, but guess what? You’re not (always) as trusted as you may think. Going back to the beginning of this blog, many people trust their peers. So, please, include your ‘super users’ into your customer services.

Here are some tips for building and maintaining peer-to-peer support (found on page 137):

• ·      If you want to build community, be prepared to hear from them
• ·      Never put your super users down in public
• ·      If you listen to their feedback, act on it and build the relationship and trust; there are super users out there that are willing to spend 40-45 hours a week on the community
• ·      Don’t promise your super users anything that you might fail to deliver

A few things I hope you’ve gained from reading this blog are:

• 1       Peer-to-peer support is vital to the survival of a company
• 2.     People trust their peers, sometimes more than professionals
• 3.     My luck ran out when my charger broke during finals week

Until next time, stay classy (and warm) my fellow bloggers.

Candace