Customer engagement platform
Digital-first, omnichannel platform built for enterprises
Digital-first, omnichannel platform built for enterprises
Agent efficiency, automation, and operational insights
Self-service support, education, and collaboration
Content management, publishing, and governance
Create a space for customers to get answers, connect with peers, and share new ideas
Connect with customers on SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp, & more
Chat with customers in real-time or anytime on your website
Start the conversation with automation, increase agent efficiency, triage, & more
Protect your brand & drive loyalty across social media and review site
Orchestrate social campaigns that drive business results
Understand social trends from customers, the market, and competitors
Find, curate, and share the best social media content
Deflect inquiries to messaging channels and self-service communities
Automate conversations with our intuitive drag-and-drop platform
Supercharge agents with AI tools & intuitive workflows
Build brand awareness with a user-generated knowledge hub
Drive higher conversion rates and more revenue
Secure solutions to keep customer information safe
Cutting-edge tech to innovate and inform your customers
Deep insights to keep a pulse on customer demands
Real-time capabilities to stay connected with consumers
An integrated platform to nurture the customer journey
Our in-house experts in social media and community management for Khoros customers
More than onboarding and implementation, this is where our partnership begins
Increase satisfaction and improve product adoption with complimentary training.
CX Confessions, the definitive podcast for digital CX leaders
Guides, tipsheets, ebooks, on-demand webinars, & more
Integrations to connect with your customers, wherever they are
Technical overviews and links to developer documentation
Join us for webinars and in-person events
Insights, tips, news, and more from our team to yours
Case studies with successful customers to see how they did it
Connect with 70K+ customer engagement professionals
A customer experience podcast with Khoros Customers
Check out our social content and follow us on every major platform
20+ years experience, built from Spredfast and Lithium
Meet the team that leads the team
Press releases and other announcements
Data integrations for better customer experience
We’re hiring — come build the future of customer experience
Need anything? We’re here for you
Our commitment to do more and do better
Digital-first, omnichannel platform built for enterprises
Agent efficiency, automation, and operational insights
Self-service support, education, and collaboration
Content management, publishing, and governance
Create a space for customers to get answers, connect with peers, and share new ideas
Connect with customers on SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp, & more
Chat with customers in real-time or anytime on your website
Start the conversation with automation, increase agent efficiency, triage, & more
Protect your brand & drive loyalty across social media and review site
Orchestrate social campaigns that drive business results
Understand social trends from customers, the market, and competitors
Find, curate, and share the best social media content
Deflect inquiries to messaging channels and self-service communities
Automate conversations with our intuitive drag-and-drop platform
Supercharge agents with AI tools & intuitive workflows
Build brand awareness with a user-generated knowledge hub
Drive higher conversion rates and more revenue
Secure solutions to keep customer information safe
Cutting-edge tech to innovate and inform your customers
Deep insights to keep a pulse on customer demands
Real-time capabilities to stay connected with consumers
An integrated platform to nurture the customer journey
Our in-house experts in social media and community management for Khoros customers
More than onboarding and implementation, this is where our partnership begins
Increase satisfaction and improve product adoption with complimentary training.
CX Confessions, the definitive podcast for digital CX leaders
Guides, tipsheets, ebooks, on-demand webinars, & more
Integrations to connect with your customers, wherever they are
Technical overviews and links to developer documentation
Join us for webinars and in-person events
Insights, tips, news, and more from our team to yours
Case studies with successful customers to see how they did it
Connect with 70K+ customer engagement professionals
A customer experience podcast with Khoros Customers
Check out our social content and follow us on every major platform
20+ years experience, built from Spredfast and Lithium
Meet the team that leads the team
Press releases and other announcements
Data integrations for better customer experience
We’re hiring — come build the future of customer experience
Need anything? We’re here for you
Our commitment to do more and do better
Is your business prepared to handle a crisis? If yours is like most big brands, the answer is probably “yes.” Most enterprise-level businesses have a social customer care plan in place for when catastrophe strikes, and have reviewed the procedure with the necessary teams. That’s simply a best practice. But even the most prepared businesses are forced to reconcile the fact that when events happen, and whether it’s a global crisis like COVID-19 or an errant statement made by a CEO, a rehearsed plan will only get you so far.
In addition to crisis management planning, savvy digital customer engagement teams also prepare for the “what ifs” of viral volume spikes that result from piling-on, an issue that seems to be a near-daily occurrence somewhere on the social web. Simply put, “piling on” and the viral spikes that result from it is a phenomenon accelerated by the social web, where any external crisis, personal offense, or social injustice can quickly ramp into a full-blown overrun of your engagement team. As a parallel, consider one of the hacker’s favorite tactics: the Denial of Service attack, in which a flood of messages directed at your website results in your site being unavailable.
In this post, we’re going to explore what happens when businesses experience a surge in customer service requests (regardless of the impetus), the negative effects of not handling a crisis efficiently, and the infrastructure needed to manage it well.
When piling-on occurs on social media, customers with simple questions unrelated to the crisis event are suddenly unable to reach you, resulting in a degraded customer experience. This threatens the customer care standards and the high-quality customer experience you and your team have carefully put in place.
When a surge in customer service requests on social media happens, your response time can be among the first casualties: where you may be running at 15 minute response times normally, suddenly, your customers are waiting an hour. In a recent survey, we found that 70% of customers expect a resound within minutes on chat.
To be sure, there is an exception to negative perceptions around longer wait times when not operating in a traditional real-time chat scenario: businesses using asynchronous chat are better prepared to get back to customers within a reasonable time frame. These instances, however, have to be set up properly; chat sessions can’t just time out and end if the customer walks away from their computer.
As customers increasingly adopt digital messaging over public social media platforms, the expectation for near-real-time engagement and reduced time waiting for a response grows.
But there’s another benefit: in addition to maintaining your high levels of service — always a great practice — being prompt measurably increases the likelihood of converting a negative or neutral opening post from a customer into a positive conversation. This means that the faster you can respond, the more likely your customers are to be delighted — or at least pleased — with the final issue resolution. Being able to manage regular customer issues promptly in the face of volume spikes is therefore not only an operational best practice, but for agents and customers alike, it’s also the path to happiness.
No matter how thorough your crisis management plan is, customer care and engagement teams won’t be able to sustain surges in requests, questions, and complaints if they don’t have the proper technology in place.
At Khoros, we build digital customer engagement platforms that scale. We provide tools that let you spot the tsunami while it’s still offshore, tools that let you “go back in time” and re-classify “piling on” posts to protect your front-line team from being overrun. Everything we do is designed to keep you online and within SLA, ensuring that you are all-ways connected.
To learn more, watch our recorded webinar Managing Customer Care During Viral Spikes, where we take a deep dive into the data science and practical take-aways for managing a high-performance team through a viral spike. In 40 minutes, you’ll gain not only an understanding of what causes these events and how to spot them but also how to prepare your team to manage through them. So check out the recorded webinar. Because hope is not a strategy.
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