Using Social Media As A Viable Platform for Providing and Improving Customer Service
Social media customer service stands true to its name. You use social media tools and platforms to provide customer support and service. In the current digital era, people use social media channels as an extension of their brand and connect with other businesses. You also expect brands to be available on the platforms to provide assistance when they need it.
You’ll only have a customer service team if you already have a proper social media marketing strategy. But, having a blueprint of how your brand can leverage social media customer service tools and solutions is all that matters.
- Using social for customer support is not like using the same social marketing tools.
- Social media customer service helps enhance relationships and fortify your brand’s reputation.
- Statistics can explain the viability. People want businesses they’re interacting with to provide social customer assistance. The sole point of offering the service is to keep customers happy.
- 68% of customers use live chat, texting or social media to contact customer service.
- According to 21% of US internet users, social media is the safest and best platform for customer service.
- More than 160 million people message brands through Instagram Direct each month.
- 63% of daily messaging app users in the country communicate with businesses every month.
Customer service medium
Far more than being a confluence for family and friends, social media also provides an avenue for existing and potential customers to contact with brands and get help when they have concerns, issues or queries.
So, social media’s emergence has given customers a whole new way to engage with the brands or products they love. It’s a forum to ask and complain when businesses disappoint.
- Concisely, if you make the effort to contact a brand on social media, you expect a response.
- If a brand treats you well, they have your loyalty. If they ignore you, or treat you badly, they may face PR and goodwill crisis.
- Tongue-in-cheek and rude replies from companies on their customer care page is what can break their business.
For example, a brand must be extra cautious before saying that it’s not responsible for charges relating to importing products to your country. When the customer hails from UK, and the firm is in US, the manager/owner might jump into the conclusion that you’re confused about duties and custom fees.
In reality, the customer might not refer to custom duties, but rather a simple notification that the concerned seller had not paid adequate shipping. If a customer doesn’t appreciate your tone and conduct, it’s bad for your brand.
Some pivotal elements
If you’re using sites like Gramista to grow an organic following, you need to reply them as quickly as possible too. Sustainability is the core here. Many types of customer support via email or phone are not 24/7. Nevertheless, social media customer support has built that always on or active expectation.
- Resultantly, 43% of customers expect a response from the brand on their social media page within an hour. Hence, you see the “typically replies in a hour” format in Facebook pages these days.
- It implies responding complaints, reviews, and inquiries as fast as possible is the best social media customer service directive.
- The time rate of your brand’s Facebook support response clearly shows on your FB page.
- The platform only considers your brand’s very responsive and quick when it replies within five minutes or even less.
- At times, you may not have the resources or bandwidth to monitor and handle social media accounts throughout the day.
- Fortunately, the incorporation of programmable messenger tools and bots and flexible, customizable messages (away) during off-hours provide effective and quick options to provide customer service of FB.
Listening to your customers
Many marketers and brands are already acquainted with social media monitoring repertoire that automate the searching process pertaining to brand name mentions. They also combine social media pages for a particular set of keywords.
However, social listening is equally crucial from a customer service viewpoint. Studies show one on every three customers operate social media to communicate with or seek advice from a business.
Depending on the volume your business’s social media accounts generate, it’s a crucial task to collect and assess/analyse customer activity. It helps you in understanding the sort of customer issues floating on social media.
Smaller brands may need to obtain a week or month’s activity while the bigger ones can probably obtain a pulse over a brief period. Businesses collect certain information to determine a series of things.
- You find the number of comments stemming from frustration and dismay of customers. It will reflect a poor and shabby customer experience online or in person.
- Brands analyse the number of account-specific and technical questions.
- You check how many comments generate positive and negative feedback. You check how many questions you can answer through links to another existing content.
- You also need to know the number of brand mentions you require and know how a response can benefit your brand.
- Check what time of day are your audience most active on social media.
Essential tools for social media customer service
These tools may vary in accordance with your company’s sizes. A single-location eatery might do with low-cost or free tools while a bigger, multi-national firm would make a significant investment in software and teamwork.
- To start, brands need to perform a self-audit to check the number of incoming messages pertaining to customer care.
- Understanding the concerned volume helps you determine how strong a tool you’ll require.
- Message management is another crucial aspect. You need to use the best tools to respond to your customers. You might use the native FB messenger or Twitter app.
- You might constantly rotate between a flurry of apps and waste precious time and money navigating through them.
To manage messages, you need a method of keeping track of the stuff and respond in a prompt and timely manner. Every network entails an app to provide free options. FB’s single inbox integrates, FB posts, Messenger and Instagram comments under one roof. You can also create a chatbot (free) for Messenger.