With a whopping 4.88 billion internet users around the world, there’s no reason for businesses not to implement social media customer service.
Almost all online shoppers use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to connect faster with their favorite brands and seek support services. People’s heavy reliance on social media opened up new ways not only to promote products but also to extend customer support.
But to do this effectively, there are key practices that businesses can do to improve social media customer service. Read on to find out what tips we have in store for you!
Importance of social media customer service
Social media customer service refers to all kinds of support provided to customers through all social networking platforms. Customer assistance can be given before, during, and after purchase. It can be about answering product information, billing, or service complaints.
In a rapidly growing marketing industry, it’s critical to establish contact channels to maintain relationships with your loyal and potential customers, and this includes a strong presence on social media.
Tips to improve your social media customer service
Every enterprise works differently, and for sure, they have their own unique way of handling customer queries. But the following tips we’re about to give you are shared by every business that wants to establish their own support team:
Set up a dedicated team for your social media customer support
The foundation of social media customer service is a dedicated social media support team that will receive, respond to, and resolve all customers’ inquiries.
To effectively establish a team of support agents, companies should utilize specialized training, workflows, and software to educate them in resolving customer issues.
After establishing a dedicated team, the next thing you should do is to segment their responsibilities across all of your channels. This ensures that there’s a clear process for how every issue is handled.
If your team specializes in a particular issue or request, they will be able to work faster and that will increase your entire team’s efficiency in resolving customer issues.
Establish social media customer service guidelines
A lot of things can happen on one social media platform; what more if you are handling multiple channels?
The key in managing all of these platforms is unified social media customer service guidelines. This way, your team can maintain a consistent tone in providing support to your customers.
To increase efficiency, these guidelines will also serve as a template in answering customers’ issues. This ensures consistency in tone and information provided to customers.
Guidelines play a crucial role in managing customer reviews too, which are a crucial factor in a shopper’s purchasing decisions. Whether customers have a positive or a negative experience, ask them nicely to leave a comment or a review.
People would always want to share their experiences. If you lack in one area, it’s better to know these areas firsthand and improve them as soon as possible.
Respond quickly and be available 24/7 across all channels
Customers, whether online or in-person, want fast service. Fast replies are very important for all users—it’s one of the most crucial components of excellent customer service.
If you have a 24/7 social media customer service team, you can quickly address their concerns without ending up with a frustrated or unhappy customer.
As an alternative to 24/7 support availability, a lot of businesses opt for chatbots.
You can set up frequently asked questions (FAQs) in your chats, which helps customers get instant answers to common concerns.
You also can utilize customer service software tools in implementing these automatic chat replies. These chatbots can reply quickly while your teams are working on other requests. This will also prevent bottlenecks of requests.
Personalize as much as possible
You may have a specific target audience, but every individual is different. They have varying requirements in terms of products and services.
As a customer support system, you have to personalize their experience as much as possible. Implementing a social media strategy to personalize every interaction will give you a chance to communicate with consumers at a more personal level.
This does not only ensure they have a positive customer experience, but it also encourages them to recommend your brand to family and friends.
Delivering excellent social media customer service
Implementing social media customer service in your business needs a thorough understanding of how your entire company operates.
If you know the ins and outs of your brand, you’ll be able to determine what your target audience is looking for, most especially the support they need.
One of the most defining aspects of a business is its ability to deliver excellent customer service. Trying out the tips we’ve given you will surely help you on a kickstart for social media customer service!
