Monitoring, customer service and crisis protocols

There are three areas in the business world that are often confused with each other and even duplicate tasks when there is no good internal communication. These are the areas of monitoring, customer service and crises, which although they share the mission of being aware of what It is said of the company, they should not perform the same function but rather coordinate through protocols to optimize their work to the maximum. For this reason, in this post I will talk about the monitoring, customer service and crisis protocols, what each one of them is and what makes them different. And this is not all, at the end of the article you will be able to free download a calendar and planning template for these work teams that I hope will be useful in your projects and companies.

What is monitoring?

We understand monitoring, in general terms, as the Listen and analyze everything that is said about a brand and/or company. However, nowadays there is more and more talk about the importance of active listening that allows us to act accordingly, something that is possible thanks to the monitoring of communication trends in the network, online presence of competition, uses and customs in the network. of our followers/customers and influential personalities in the sector.

To carry out this work, it is necessary to propose a strategy with clear main objectives so that our resources and monitoring time are not in vain. In addition, there are a multitude of tools that can facilitate this work that at first glance seems, and is, so laborious. Likewise, in the execution, the so-called monitoring protocols will come into play, which consist of establishing the guidelines to be followed by the team in charge of this function: functions of each member, schedules, tools, channels, keywords, competition, personalities and trends to follow. , management of questions and incidents, etc.

What is customer service?

Customer service is an area or department of a company that is responsible for Respond to customer suggestions or complaints. Being necessary to cover the change that has caused the world of the Internet, in general, and social networks, in particular, in this relationship between company-client.

From postal mail it went to the telephone and then to email. But the moment social networks and the Internet arrived, there was a radical transformation. Suggestions and complaints no longer only arrived through private means of communication, but also through public means and open to other users. This, together with the immediacy of the Internet and how fast any piece of news can go around the world, makes customer service a crucial element, not only for customer satisfaction, but also as a crisis prevention.

In this area we can also talk about customer service protocols that stipulate in detail the steps to follow in each case when contacted by a user/customer depending on the channel through which the query is received, the question raised, the urgency of it and other factors such as whether it is a current or potential customer.

What is a crisis?

Although there are those who are alarmed at the first change, at the slightest criticism online, the truth is that we cannot talk about a crisis until it is an event that could cause a serious threat that affects the performance of the company or brand and lead to negative results.

The most important thing about crises is knowing how to catch them on time, being able to differentiate between three phases of development: pre-crisis (a fact that can lead to a crisis), crisis (the fact comes out to public opinion) and post-crisis (control of the situation). As is evident, the passage from the pre-crisis to the crisis is nowadays marked with a much finer line than in the past, and social networks and the Internet have a lot to do with it. However, we must know how to value the positive side of the new digital media, since thanks to good monitoring in them we will be able to detect criticism to tackle them in the best possible way and thus, crises will no longer come as a surprise as when the problem came directly from the headline of a large newspaper with national circulation.

In this case, in the face of any suspicion of the start of a crisis or conflictive element in a company, it is very useful to create a crisis cabinet made up of the members and/or managers of the affected areas who will have to put on the table all the possible scenarios for the development of the crisis and the ways in which they will be able to tackle them in a foreseeable manner.