How to Improve Social Media Customer Service
Once you have the basics of social media customer service down, it's time to step up your game. These tips will help your company connect with your customers even better.
Kelsey Jones
Even if your company isn’t ready for it yet, social media is probably used by many of your customers as a way to contact businesses about products and services. Many major companies are hiring entire teams of social media specialists who are trained on how to best respond to customer service requests through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other sites.
Whether you have a team of your own handling social media customer service, or you’re the sole manager learning best practices, these suggestions can help you improve your messaging and strategy. They offer solutions to help you provide timely responses to your customers, no matter how they contact you.
Track Misnomers and Misspellings
Set Up Your Social Media Listening with Mistakes in Mind
- Hashtags instead of @Mentions of the company name, or no symbol used at all
- Incorrect spacing in company name
- (Design Note: For the Twitter graphic only show the first 2 tweets and change the names to “Carli J. @carlijohnson” and “Samantha Smith @sami4321” then have an arrow pointing to @modclothe and ModClothe with the bullet below
- Misspellings: A word spelled incorrectly in your company name
dictiocanary It’s not all doom and gloom, I also wore a pretty dress today. I know red hair and green is kinda cliche,I just don’t care, I really like green
dictiocanary #modcloth #vingatestyle #librarianlife #librarianwardrobe #librarianstyle #childenslibrarian #librarylife #booksaddicts #bibliophile #bookworm
#EmpowerYourBody Retalier Mod Cloth dropped the term “plus” on its site in favor of the term “Extended Sizes” encouraging clients to use hashtag #StyleForAll. This came after results of a survey where a 56% majority said the term ”Plus” was frustrating to them. Katie K Active offers all styles in ”Plus” but does this term itself create a problem for you? Read and coment please!
- Carli J. @carlijohnson -25 Sep 2014
- Everyday I stop myself from spending my whole check on @modclothe shoes
- Samanta Smith @sami4321 -15 Sep 2014
- “Coolest shoes ever” I’m surprised ModeClothe doesn’t have a pair @cwinters
It’s common sense to track mentions of your brand and products through your username and product names. Have you ever thought to track misspellings and other mistakes? If you don’t, you may miss out on valuable customer service opportunities, or people saying great things about what you offer.
Be sure to track the hashtag version of any Twitter and Instagram accounts you own, including top executives’ names. For example, #MarkCuban is a common hashtag for the people discussing the Dallas Mavericks, as he’s the owner.
One Instagram user, a children’s librarian whose quirky style has earned her over 17.2K followers, used the hashtag #modcloth instead of tagging the company’s official Instagram profile, @modcloth. In one post, her followers fell in love with her green dress and asked her where they could buy it. This is a valuable opportunity for ModCloth, a popular inexpensive clothing retailer, to thank the user for her post, then direct the commenters to the page where they can buy the garment or find something similar.
Besides random hashtag use, be sure to track misspellings of your brand and products as well. ModCloth also needs to track the results of “Modclothe” which is a common misspelling, and “Mod Cloth.” There are plenty of opportunities for the ModCloth team to engage with customers on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and they have to be on top of the variations in how their audience addresses them. To come up with hashtags and misspellings, brainstorm options with your team in a shared Google Doc, or look at the customer service archives or Google AdWords data to see if there are any common misspellings.
Have a Team Around The Clock or Receive Alerts
The best social media teams work in shifts so social media is managed 24/7, even on holidays. If your organization isn’t to that level yet, consider setting up alerts on employee phones (or your phone, if you’re the sole manager) to get notifications for mentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Facebook pages app is great for handling these, as well as for managing posts. While push notifications aren’t the most peaceful option, many entrepreneurs or social media managers find that they sleep better at night knowing their apps will ping them if there are any fires to handle.
But if this isn’t an option or you want something more scheduled, set multiple, recurring daily reminders to check your social media mentions and customer messages. Many customers won’t mind an answer within four to eight hours, depending on the request. However, this obviously isn’t true for a company like Southwest Airlines: People use social media to ask about flights or luggage. Make sure you choose the best option for your business.
How to Manage the 24/7 Nature of Social Media Customer Service
- Options for small- and medium-sized businesses
- Work in shifts so social media is monitored at all times, even on holidays
- Set up alerts on smartphones to get for mentions on your most active sites
- Set recurring daily reminders to check your social media mentions and customer messages
- For larger companies, or companies handling more than 50 requests per day,
- Formalize your social media customer service strategy
- Hire a dedicated team
- Have a dedicated Twitter account just for customer service help
- Include your support information in your Twitter bio
- On your website support page, show every customer service support method, including on social media
Finally, if your organization is big enough that it handles more than 50 or 100 customer service requests per day, it may be time to formalize your strategy by having a dedicated team. Most organizations wouldn’t bat an eye to hire enough customer service representatives to manage the phones or email support requests, and social media shouldn’t be any different. Many large companies have dedicated Twitter accounts just for customer service help, such as @DellCares, or they have their Support information right in their Twitter bio, like Virgin America.
Setting up a dedicated Twitter customer service account should also be considered and shown as an option to users. The Virgin America support page gives all the options customers can use to contact them, and Twitter is just one.
Customers like options that make getting ahold of someone as easy as possible. After all, people spend just under five hours per day on their phones and 28 per cent of their time online on social media. Be available where they are—it’s crucial to your customer service efforts.
Be the Fall Guy and Do What It Takes to Fix It
When customers reach out via social media, they are usually looking for a response that includes a resolution or a next step toward fixing their problem. If they are complaining about a product or service, and you have the power to fix it, it is usually more beneficial to do so. Making customers go through a long process of calling a support line or emailing a different person wasn’t their preferred method of contacting your organization, so why make them go through that if it’s not needed?
One example is with Delta’s Twitter support. My husband spelled my middle name wrong on our honeymoon flight reservations. The third-party booking site he used responded to his request to update the reservation and said it would require more than $50 in change fees. Instead of settling for this option, I tried tweeting at Delta first, and the error was fixed within the hour.
Excellent Customer Service on Social Media Will Thrill Your Customers
- The most successful social media interactions are
- Personal
- Genuine
- Relevant
- Scale that connectivity by integrating social media data into your CRM system
@DeltaAssist
@wonderwall7 That wasn’t too bad (smile).
Please check your email for an update.
Thanks for choosing us for your travel plans.
@wonderwall7
UR amazing! Maybe I should take u on the honeymoon instead RT @DeltaAssist @wonderwall7 That wasn’t too bad 🙂
Please check email.
@wonderwall7
@deltaassist saves day! Thank you so much @delta Now on teaching @harrison2785 to spell my middle name right..
@deltaassist
@wonderwall7 you are welcome. Glad to be of help @harrison2785 I hope you won’t be in a lot of trouble (smile). Enjoy your trip
Because of a simple exchange over Twitter, Delta did what it took to make the change and keep my business; since then, I’ve turned into an advocate for them. Delta could have earned a few bucks charging me for the change, but an advocate for your brand is much more valuable.
Whenever possible, when customers reach out through social media, do what it takes to fix issues quickly and easily. After all, if they contact you through a fast-moving medium, it makes sense to resolve problems (as often as possible) in the same way.
Social media customer service comes down to three things:
- Tracking as many variations as possible of your brand and product mentions
- Responding to these mentions and requests for support as quickly as possible
- Doing what it takes to make the customer happy
While it may take some experimentation to figure out what works best for your organization to get customer service right through Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms, it’s worth mapping out a dedicated strategy. After all, making sure your customers are satisfied is the quickest way to get more good words about what you offer published online.
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