More consumers than ever are heading to social media to share their critiques about their favourite brands – so it’s essential that you’re online to react fast and help keep customers on your side. In fact, failing to do so could prove catastrophic for your business. As Gartner reports, companies that ignore customer support requests and complaints on social media can have a 15% higher churn rate than those who were proactive.
So, now that we’ve established that social media plays a major role in delivering effective customer service online, it’s time to find out the best ways to provide such service.
Define your goals and expectations
Before you set off to improve your levels of customer service on social media, you need to define your key goals and expectations – or, in other words, your key performance indicators. Perhaps your aim is to improve the time it takes for your brand to offer a response or reaction to a customer comment, or maybe it’s to improve the positive and negative mentions ratio in an attempt to build a positive buzz around your brand. By setting clear KPIs, you’ll be able to focus on what’s important and improve your reputation.
Set the right guidelines for each social platform
One of the biggest issues with social media is the fact that platforms vary significantly. The customer service experience you deliver on Instagram, for example, won’t be the same as the way you’ll deal with a negative review on Facebook. By creating a set of guidelines, you’ll be able to prepare yourself and your staffers for any and every eventuality and ensure that you offer a consistent customer service experience, wherever your customers are.
Make sure you’re active on the right platforms. See where your customers are, and look at how your competitors are dealing with customer service to see if you can get any pointers. From there, make sure you set the right tone and style for each platform; on Twitter, you might want to include emoji, while on LinkedIn you’ll want to adopt a more professional tone. Finally, know when to take the conversation private. Delivering customer service on a public platform can have a positive impact on your brand, but you should be prepared to take the conversation away from the platform if you risk damaging your brand.
Find the right tools for the job
Delivering effective customer service on social media can be challenging – especially when you have to monitor multiple platforms, deal with customer concerns and work with other customer service advisors in your staffer. Use the inbuilt tools available to you on social media, like Facebook Messenger’s labels and notes, and use Twitter’s Customer Feedback tool. Chatbots and brand monitoring tools are also options that you can consider.
There you have it – our three step guide to improving your customer service on social media. Whether you’re running a small business or a country-wide operation, keeping your customers happy will allow you to grow and expand your brand – and keep everyone on your side.
