What You Can Learn About Social CRM From the DMV

 
 

HotProspect.com 398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
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What You Can Learn About Social CRM From the DMV
“God giveth, and the DMV taketh away.” – Miss Hellberg, License to Drive Earlier this year I found myself with an expired driver’s license; it had actually been expired for a few months by the time I realized it. Sometimes running a startup gets in the way of the basics. So, I took an early morning trip to the San Francisco DMV office, filled out my paperwork, waited in line, paid my fees, and took a picture. I left with a temporary paper license and the promise that a brand new and valid CDL would arrive in the mail within the next few weeks. Fast-forward four months and my wife asked me if I had ever received my license. I realized that I hadn’t, and even worse, my temporary license had been expired for about two months. I called the DMV and was told that there had been a “glitch”. ”Don’t worry,” said the operator, “this happens all the time”. Frustrated by their failure to convey vital information, I turned to Twitter and saw that the California DMV had a verified account which looked pretty active so, I sent this Tweet: @CA_DMV requested CDL 4 mos ago. Was just told there was a system glitch & was never issued. Won't receive for wks. Any way to expedite? And voila, three minutes later something totally unexpected happened, they Tweeted me back. @JoeF We would like to help. Please follow DMV & DM us your name, DL number & phone number so we can contact you.ow.ly/432m7 I followed the account back and DM’d all the details they had requested. No less than 10 mins later a call with a Sacramento area code came through. It was the DMV! The rep let me know that she had found my account, cleared up the issue, and would be in touch before the end of the day for with a new ETA for my license. She came across as informed, empowered, and totally pleasant. Then, as promised, I got a follow up call letting me know that the issues had been cleared up and that my license was en route. Awesome!


 


  The California DMV is not known for its stellar customer support, so to have this awesomely efficient experience through Twitter completely blew me away. This was the best customer support experience I’ve ever had relative to my expectations.

HotProspect.com 398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
  [email protected]

From my perspective, the DMV did several things right. First, they were discoverable and active on Twitter. The California DMV account was verified and had several Tweets and @replies per day in it’s timeline. This gave me hope that the Twitter account could be a viable customer support channel. Second, they were listening. A three minute response time on a support inquiry through a social channel is astonishing, regardless of who you are. But a response time of that speed from a government agency that traditionally has not been associated with world class customer support, had my head spinning. Clearly, there is some infrastructure in place for dealing with customers on Twitter, which is great to see. Third, they empowered employees to take action. I wasn’t shuffled around to multiple points of contact or pushed to an alternate channel. The response came quickly and proactively from a single employee who was qualified to guide me through, until my issue was resolved. As illustrated above, if your business is going to have a presence in social media, then you must expect support inquiries. Having a standard process for dealing with support requests is critical to both maintaining positive relationships with your users, and keeping your business processes as efficient as possible. In words that I never thought I would say: Be more like the DMV! ###