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What can Church's Chicken learn about operating its social media?
Church’s Chicken, like many popular eateries have tried to keep up with the trends in social media. In doing so, its marketers have created profiles on several social media sites.
The point of setting up profiles on a variety of social media platforms is to interact with consumers. This can be invaluable to any company as it can answer questions, deal with problems and otherwise engage in meaningful online conversations with consumers.
This helps build a rapport with customers which can turn into a long term relationship. Isn’t that the goal of businesses? Church’s Chicken has some excellent profiles and decent content on social sites; but there is little to no interaction between the restaurant and consumers, that’s where it falls short.
Social Media Platforms Church’s Chicken Utilizes
Church’s Chicken has its own website which contains lots of information about the restaurant and specials that are currently running. There isn’t a blog onsite but consumers can certainly find a Church’s near them whether they are at home or travelling.
This is good, especially for those who really love to eat fried chicken.
The company also has the standard social accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube Channel and has extended its social reach to Google+. Its sites are aesthetically appealing and have clean navigation, but there is very little activity on the part of the restaurant.
Communication 101
Visitors to Church’s social sites will find some rather sporadic posting habits. For instance, on the official Facebook page there appear to be about two posts per month. Some of these are on the same day while others are a couple of days apart.
There is absolutely no interaction with consumers who have posted comments on the page. One customer had a problem with a store manager which would not accept a coupon for the store. This post, like others had no response by Church’s Chicken personnel, nor did there appear to be any attempt on the part of the business to correct or speak to the situation in any way.
Other social sites seem to follow this same random pattern.
The company's Twitter account has been inactive for two months and prior to a couple of tweets sent out in April 2014, there had not been a tweet since August 29 of last year.
For some reason, the Google+ account was somewhat more active with a couple of videos posted just a few days ago.
However, there is still quite a good stretch of time between videos or content that have been posted. Church's YouTube channel has about four videos which might indicate a new account. But two videos were uploaded a month ago and then two more one day ago.
It seems that the company is simply inconsistent in its handling of social media accounts.
Customer Reviews
Yelp and TripAdvisor are two of the most popular sites for consumers to review businesses. Both of these sites contained reviews with a variety of responses from consumers.
For the most part, customers were very pleased with the quality of food and service that they received at Church’s Chicken. There really were not a lot of complaints against the restaurant except for isolated instances of poor service or unclean conditions.
However, once again, the restaurant never made attempts at addressing the needs of reviewers. There are virtually no comments on any social site or review site offered by Church’s Chicken. When comparing the restaurant with other similar eating establishments, most consumers are likely to find the same types of poor communication habits.
There are several restaurants which offer similar food services to the public and not one of those comparable eateries offered to address consumer’s responses about their experiences at the restaurants.
What Could Church's Chicken Do To Improve Its Service?
One of the most important ways a restaurant can guarantee customer satisfaction is by using social tools and reviews sites as an extension of its customer services.
Church's Chicken does not use any of its social networks to respond to customer complaints, nor does it post regularly enough to keep its customers aware of the brand.
The company should certainly monitor its reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp more closely and take a look at some other restaurant brands that ace social every time they post [link to restaurants succeeding on social article].