Attendo's journey of change in Finland has been to evolve as an organisation and create a better image of themselves as a care provider for Finns. Social media has been an important communication channel for Attendo in communicating this major cultural change.
Sanni Heikkinen, Attendo's Communications Coordinator, emphasises the presence of social media and the quick response to customers' questions and comments as part of their communication.
– It's important for us to be present and responsive because of our reputation. We want to be part of the conversation and we want to be low-threshold professionals and show our professionalism on social media. We want to be the highest quality and most respected company in the care sector in Finland. Even though the discussion may sometimes be negative in social media, our presence, our reactions and our answers give the recipient a feeling that he or she is facing the right person who wants to help and understand.
The presence of social media is also strongly emphasised from the perspective of proximity communication and potential jobseekers.
– If you think about our target groups on social media, Instagram is an important channel for our individual Attendo homes for proximity communication. Close relatives can see that we are present there and they can see what it's like in our everyday life. In addition to proximity communication, it also plays a role in building an employer image. On our Instagram accounts, potential job seekers can see what everyday life and work is really like for us, and as a result, hopefully they will be interested in applying for a job with us.
Big Leaps in customer service delivery
Sanni Heikkinen highlights the importance of customer service in Attendo's transformation journey. Attendo has made great strides in implementing customer service, especially in social media.
– In our customer service on social media, we strive to be easily accessible with a low threshold. You can ask us questions and we will answer them quickly. This is a trump card for us in customer service that we have tried to emphasise over the last couple of years in our transformation journey. We guide customers through their problems by private message, because we get quite a lot of comments on ads and posts. If customers have a more personal or detailed issue, we can then direct them via private message to, for example, recruitment or HR.
Social media coordination as an important part of reputation management
Social media management tools have become an important tool for Attendo as part of the company's reputation management. According to Sanni Heikkinen, it enables Attendo to better highlight the everyday life in Attendo homes.
– Retriever's social media management tools are an important tool for us in terms of reputation management. It allows us to better respond to customers and be active and present in social media. We want to highlight the 'right side' of our industry, and how we at Attendo homes live a humane and good everyday life, why not also a celebration. On Instagram, we currently have around 300 care homes updating content about their own working days and the moments of everyday life and celebrations they have with their customers. This is the reality that we definitely want to make visible. In the care sector, negative images can come up, and with a social media tool like this, we are trying to improve these negative images of us, at least a little bit. All of this is made easier with Retriever.
Improving communication through social media coordination
As social media is an important communication channel for Attendo, its coordination becomes even more important. Attendo uses the Publish, Measure and Engage to coordinate their social media and this is particularly helpful when responding to messages.
– We use the tools to coordinate communications, especially when responding. It really speeds up our work when we can respond to messages coming through one tool. The time it saves our team is significant, as we don't have to respond to customers individually through different channels, but can do this from a single platform. We can see all the comments and messages we have received on social media. In addition to replying, we can also save the completed responses.
Attendo has several social media channels where they regularly publish content. According to Sanni Heikkinen, Retriever's tools help Attendo to plan and schedule the content they publish well into the future.
– On the social media side, we have Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, among others. These are linked to our social media management tools. In the case of Facebook, for example, we have several different subpages that are used by different departments. Retriever helps a lot in managing these channels. We also have a social calendar in the Publish section. This is where we schedule and publish our posts to the different social media channels. It helps us from a social media perspective as well as from a communication perspective, as we can plan our patterns further ahead. For example, we have all our holidays and theme days calendared there.
Retriever's social media tools have made Attendo's work easier and also helped them to improve their processes. In particular, Attendo has made improvements in the feedback process with the help of the tools.
– We are constantly developing our feedback process as part of our change journey and as part of our communication goals. So when we receive feedback and comments, we sort them by sentiment in terms of negativity or positivity. It helps us to distinguish certain negative or positive themes and also to develop our social media dialogue more. We want to do this with an increasingly low threshold and Retriever's social media management has therefore created a low threshold for noticing and responding to comments. It frees up our time for other social media work, so it's also a useful tool from a time-saving point of view.
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