Social media is a crucial channel for creating and maintaining your brand identity, spread brand awareness, social listening, generate leads, and marketing your products. Instant response and resolution is the new benchmark set in social media for customer service.
Social media was intended as a platform for people to connect and interact with each other, share information. Social media is vital for managing customers in this modern age.
Since everything is on social media these days, it is an excellent platform for brands to follow up on their customers, listen to their requirements, and feedback, solve their complaints on social media. It is a great way to promote the visibility of your brand.
Tips for successful customer management using social media.
1. Quickfire Reply, Respond To Comments and Messages
There are different expectations regarding reply to phone calls and tickets. They are not expected to be available all day and provide an instant solution. But that’s what is expected of social media.
You have to reply promptly, respond to comments, and assure the original poster. You have to take action and resolve the issue immediately.
2. Using Facebook and Twitter Pages For Addressing and Solving Customer Issues
Facebook gives out information on your business page about your average response time. The fast turnaround on Facebook is replying within 5mins.
Whereas on Twitter, the reply should be instantaneous. Most Twitterati’s want engagement within the hour of posting the tweet. Use direct messaging feature for long drawn explanations.
Create a general framework by posing questions. You have to decide how you are going to approach the message from the user. Who is the person to determine if a message is positive or negative? What should you do in case of negative comments- reply there or transfer to other support options? Who will handle these cases?
3. Combating Negative Comments On Social Media Pages
There is posting in the public thread, and there are instances where you should consider private posting. You can’t make every critic on social media happy. So, don’t try to.
Take an issue and handle it to the best of your efforts. When there is high negativity, reply positively, and initiate a direct message, email, or phone call to resolve their problem.
For direct messages, acknowledge the user on the receipt of messages. Always end the conversation on your terms.
4. Monitor Comments and Messages using Social Media Management Tool
Listen to your brand on social media and tackles issues that crop up even if your brand is not explicitly tagged. Use a social media management tool to monitor content on various social media platforms.
Many social media management tools offer you options to follow an endless number of social media channels from one place, schedule, and post your content across these channels and have the social listening feature to monitor your brand perception. Some of the popular tools that we suggest are Hootsuite, Tailwind, Sprout Social, Planable.io.
These tools are great to handle activities across the social media spectrum from Facebook and Twitter to Pinterest and more.
5. Practical Usage of social media for customer service
Example #1: Zappos
Zappos is a clothing and shoe retailer based in the US. They have an uber active social media handle on twitter. They banter with their customers, solve their issues, and emphasize on enriching the user experience.
Example #2: Domino’s Pizza
Dominos is a well-known brand. They have an active social media handle and interact with their consumers. They created a platform where users can choose to order pizza on Twitter. Domino’s social media team also tries genuinely to hear and solve issues and share helpful answers through their handle.
Source for examples https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-service-tweets