City Link use social media to engage with customers

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City Link is using the power of social media to engage with customers in real-time as part of a wider campaign to analyse and then improve the overall customer experience – for its account based customers sending the parcels and for the end customers who receive them.

City Link has improved its presence on a number of social networking platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. The company has integrated its Twitter feed into its customer care systems and can now interact with customers and respond to queries and pressing issues in real time.

City Link Head of Customer Care, Peter Fisher, said: “City Link is now up and running on all the main social media platforms but, more importantly, through our Twitter channel we now offer our end customers (those we are delivering to) a new channel to interact with us in the way they want to. It allows us to listen to customers and respond to feedback and deal with live issues, in the same way we can online and over the phone.”

As well as running a well established account based customer survey, called the Customer Voice Counts, City Link has also now launched a new channel which encourages feedback from the end customer who actually gets the delivery experience.

“With regard to the level of customer feedback initiatives now in place City Link is firmly at the forefront of the market,” said Peter Fisher. “We are looking for feedback throughout the customer’s entire journey – from the original sale, to booking, collection, tracking, reporting, account management, billing (and claim, in the event of a problem).

“Gaining relevant and insightful feedback is vital if we are to improve the experience we give our customers, and we recognise that the views of the customers who we are delivering to are just as important as the views of the account customers who pay the bills.”

“Ultimately if we can’t meet the needs of the end customer, then we will not keep the paying customer. Social media is just one option for our end customers to give us feedback; we have also now introduced an online survey available to every customer we deliver to which will enable us to get a much better feel for the things we do right and wrong for this critically important customer group.”

“And our approach is already bearing fruit. It has also been a significant input to the review of our Account Management approach and to the plans we put in place for what was a very successful Christmas peak period..”

Other planned initiatives include the launch of a series of customer forums, major enhancements to its My City Link reporting system and its Claims processes, a nationwide programme of compliance and customer service training across all depots and drivers.