On Birchbox’s 7^th anniversary, they celebrated Customer Appreciation Day, and in order to keep track of all of the social media comments, questions, and concerns—they launched their first ever “social media war room” where over 40 employees came together to make sure their social customer was happy. Here, they responded with personal messages, emojis, etc. to really make the customer feel like they were important with Birchbox.

Seems like a pretty easy task, right? It wasn’t, in fact it took several months just to get this war room up and running. Birchbox’s social media directior told Glossy that they had other team members outside of the social team working on this initiative. They got employees that don’t typically do customer service or write social posts learn the voice of the brand. The on-boarding on it’s own took a very long time just to train these employees. The main focus of Birchbox this year was to really engage it’s audience rather than to JUST reply back to a comment. They would then respond back with special offers just for them based off of past purchase history, etc.

As a result of the war room, there was an increase of 211 percent traffic to the Birchbox website just from social platforms by itself. Their top post was a Facebook live giveaway, where they were sending out personalized gifts to Birchbox subscribers that have been with them for a long period of time. What I love most about the war room, is that Birchbox is really focusing on the personalized customer experience, rather than just the individual on their own.

It was really important that Birchbox found it’s way this year, after a big lay off spree and closing down a few of their brick-and-mortar stores. With the subscription box slowly failing, they are seeking to find new and innovative ways to keep their brand alive—with the war room being one of their main focuses. One of the many things that Birchbox is looking to do is to partner with big retailers, possibly Walmart being one of them.

“Subscription services are in a risky space. The market’s both not matured, and it’s gotten incredibly crowded,” said Cheryl Cheng, a VC partner at the firm BlueRun Ventures. “It’s not that the market has come and gone, but it’s no longer a viable standalone business.”

Social media posts are typically used to gain a large amount of money (although if it comes through, that would be nice) so engagement is extremely important, for all brands. After seeing this huge success from Customer Appreciation Day, Birchbox plans to use this engagement in many ways to come!

Sources:

• https://digiday.com/marketing/inside-birchboxs-40-person-social-media-war-room/
• http://www.glossy.co/new-face-of-beauty/inside-birchboxs-40-person-social-media-war-room?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_content=hilary-milnes-new-face-of-beauty-inside-birchboxs-40-person-social-media-war-room&utm_campaign=glossysiteshare-top