Making Effective Decisions

While working as social media manager in a small company, I noticed that the company was spending a lot of money advertising on Instagram, then trying to respond to feedback posted to the account. This was sucking up resource without delivering the support that customers needed.

No-one in the office had specific social media management experience, so to help decide what action was needed to improve, I hired a specialist agency to review the business and provide recommendations. The agency proposed that we set up a chatbot service, which would save time and streamline managing customer feedback and support.

The suggestion was enthusiastically supported by the company owner, but I was concerned that, as a small company, providing a more personalized service was important for our customers. I created a survey therefore asking customers about how they would like to provide feedback and to rate different options, which confirmed my suspicions.

I presented this evidence to the owner and suggested we refine the proposal to allow customers to be diverted to hired call handlers more easily. This would cost more, but ensure a more personalized service. I presented costings and convinced the owner to run a short-term pilot of the two alternatives.

The outcome of the pilot was clear: the hybrid solution was far more popular among customers using the service and encouraged greater levels of retention, which justified the additional expense. The owner was extremely happy with the solution, which was rolled out in full a few weeks later.

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