The desire for customer service is one of the most important reasons to follow a brand on social media. Providing good customer service on social media is critical to building customer loyalty and improving a company's image.
For brands, this is a huge opportunity, but also a huge challenge: With an ever-increasing number of different customer concerns across more channels, it's easy to lose track of what's going on. Here are some practical tips to help you manage your digital customer service.
What is important for your social customer service?
We covered the general aspects of this important topic in our basic article, "Making Customer Service Work on Social". Now it's time to take it a step further and explore practical tips to help you take your social customer service to the next level.
- At the strategy stage, determine which channels are appropriate for customer service inquiries and how everyone else should handle them. What social media channels are appropriate? Where do you meet your customers? Facebook? Instagram? WhatsApp?
- Think about reasonable rules for prioritizing requests: which ones are most important and which ones require a quick response.
- Fast response times: You know that customers expect quick responses on social media. Try to respond to inquiries and complaints as quickly as possible, preferably within a few hours. Think about reasonable rules for prioritizing requests: which ones are most important and which ones require a quick response.
- Personalize: You can address customers by name and address their specific concerns. This shows that you care about their needs. Many social media management tools provide placeholders for this.
- Treat all inquiries seriously. When a customer contacts your brand, it's a great opportunity to turn them into a fan with a good response. Remain authentic and honest in your communications. Customers appreciate when they feel like they are talking to a real person. By the way, this is why you shouldn't rely solely on chatbots.
- Public and private communications: For personal information or more sensitive matters, you should invite customers to communicate privately, such as through direct messaging. You should treat your customers' privacy as your greatest asset.
- Use automation when possible and when it makes sense for the customer. Always be prepared to take over a customer interaction if necessary.
- Collaboration: Create a clear structure in your team: who has what role with what authority and responsibility? Who does what in case of absence? Create a positive team atmosphere where mutual support is not a chore but a basic need for everyone. Give your team the tools they need to work together seamlessly. Only then can they coordinate perfectly and act efficiently.
- Keep your team's social media skills at the highest level possible with regular training, because social media is always changing. It's important that all employees are trained in social media and understand the company's customer service policies. One way to do this: Our webinar and event series.
- Set ambitious but achievable goals for response and resolution times, and regularly measure customer sentiment and satisfaction. Use social media analytics tools to collect and analyze data about your customer service performance. This can help you make continuous improvements.
- Bonus tip: Facelift is the perfect way to implement all of these tips, because that's what we designed it for.
By following these tips, you can improve your social media customer service and build a positive customer relationship. Remember, though, that every business is unique, so flexibility and adaptability are key.
Still not satisfied with social customer service tips?
We'll show you how to build excellent social customer service in our comprehensive guide. If you want to take your social channels as a whole to a whole new level and benefit from collision detection, intelligent team assignments, and automated response templates for your customer service team, sign up for a no-obligation demo.