Welcome to this We Are Social New York how-to on bringing out the bright side of the internet.
Let’s get started.
We’re talking eBay. You know, the place where you snag all your vintage jeans and find all those rare trading cards you’ll turn into a side hustle business.
No doubt, eBay is a special brand with a rich history. But due to the changing E-Commerce landscape it’s lost ground with Gen Z buyers and sellers.
Fun fact about misperceptions: negative perception often comes from consumer opinions about a poor product experience. And that’s exactly what we saw. Lots of unanswered DMs, resulting in angry customers communicating their frustrations publicly on both their channels and on eBay’s owned channels.
This discovery was our lightbulb moment. eBay needed a refreshed CS and CM approach.
We knew the power of CS and CM, and their connection to community-building and positive perception. So we developed a new strategy and trained the eBay Customer Service team. Then we ran point on community management with a 24/7 global approach across 4 of our offices around the world. All in the name of creating stronger, more positive connections with users.
So how do you shift misperceptions surrounding eBay and increase positive sentiment across all social platforms?
Follow these simple steps:
Step 1
Develop and implement a proactive social community management strategy and playbook to support all pilot campaign-related platforms. We implemented proactive community management to engage consumers and mitigate negative comments, particularly tapping into Story Mentions on Instagram to hone in on brand love and customer service issues that would have been previously overlooked.
Step 2
Train a large team of eBay Customer Service stakeholders and lead the community management efforts across 4 markets (US, UK, AU & CA) with these local offices providing 24/7 coverage globally. Pre-pilot, eBay CS support included Facebook US/UK/CA (public / private), Twitter @eBay & @askeBay handles (public / private) eBay For Business Facebook (public / private).
Step 3
Hand over complete CM control to the eBay CS team, which includes Instagram US/AU/CA, TikTok AU, Facebook CA, and Facebook US Marketing Post Replies.
Does implementing a sound, proactive social community management strategy help?
In so many ways.
Here’s what we found:
CM played a big role in fostering brand love and creating 1-1 positive interactions with consumers. And it helped positive engagement across all of the owned channels and supported the campaign content with continued engagement.
Just one month into the campaign, there were 8,000+ CM and CS replies on channels and posts that in the past, would not have been engaged with.
For the overall campaign, did we shift positive sentiment and boost relevancy? You bet.
We boosted positive sentiment to 81%. That’s 30 points above eBay’s benchmark of 51%. We increased the relevancy rate across consumer comments to 73%, a nothing-to-sniff-at 13 points above the 60% average. And in Canada, Instagram views jumped 340% and Facebook went up 30%.
