By Laura Morris
Last year at Blogwell, Nick Ayers, Interactive Marketing Manager at Home Depot, shared his perspective on how the company is using social media to revitalize its customer service reputation. Check out the video below for extra details.
Video: You Can Do It, We Can (Still) Help
Slidedeck: You Can Do It, We Can (Still) Help
The Opportunity:
Home Depot found that previously overlooked “passionates” that sat outside the brand’s historic target audience were engaging with the Home Depot brand online. The company would try to capitalize on this organic interest to use social media as a way to differentiate itself from competitors with the goal of recapturing a group of consumers they lost during the customer service slip.
The Plan:
(1) Leverage Front-Line Staff: Nick notes that social media provided Home Depot with a way to engage store associates in meaningful way. By tapping into the collective knowledge of those store associates (ex: getting garden associate to blog about how he tends to plants; creating a video of craftsman giving tips on how to build a deck), Home Depot was able to provide different-in-kind value for potential customers.
(2) Follow Your Audience: Home Depot found that while homedepot.com is a destination, it’s not the only destination for home improvement information. Rather than trying to boost homedepot.com higher in the rankings (it was typically consumers 4th or 5th stop), Home Depot could use video syndication to bring “how to” content to websites that customers were already frequenting like YouTube and howCast.
Case-in-Point:
One of Home Depot’s biggest opportunities was providing guidance and support during natural disasters, a time when home safety and repair was already top-of-mind for customers. Home Depot hypothesized that Twitter could help them “reach further, faster” when it came to sharing advice on how to prepare for and recover from natural disasters.
MLC members, for more information on how you can leverage social to improve customer service, please visit our Social Media Topic Center and register for our July 15 webinar, Building a Socially Intelligent Enterprise: Closing the CEO Leadership Gap in Social Media.
(photo of a Home Depot store via Flickr user neubie)
Related posts:
- Social Media in ‘Unsocial’ Industries
- With Social Experience, Be Different…in a Way That Few Can Follow
- Nothing to Lose But Your Chains: Touchpoint Planning in the Social (Media) Revolution
- Mass Media, Welcome to Your New Supporting Role (try not to be jealous)
- Social Media Value Many Marketers are Missing
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