Leveraging on Social Media as an effective Customer Support Tool

Social media can be your magic wand that opens up a window of opportunity not only to build your brand awareness but also to promote customer relationships.

When a customer evinces interest in our product or service offering we shouldn’t let go of that opportunity to connect with and engage them at a personal level. Using Social media as a primary customer support tool is very effective as it allows customers to seamlessly reach out to your team on platforms where they are already engaging with.

Because of the tremendous reach of the social media platforms, it is imperative that we deploy the right strategy in creating brand awareness. Demonstrating our competence in handling customer enquiries as well as quick redressal of complaints that emanate through social media should be our utmost priority because it has the propensity to make or break the company’s credibility.

A swift and thoughtful response to a query, complaint or service request goes a long way in building customers’ trust and loyalty.

It’s needless to emphasize the tremendous reach of social media today and so organizations shouldn’t hesitate to leverage as the vehicle for customer support. It not only offers an ideal platform for marketing our products and services, but also serves as a channel for delivering superior, personalized service.

Use Social Media platforms into superior customer service

  • 1. Be available for the Customers at all times

    Having our presence on social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook can drive better engagement with our customers. As these platforms already have a huge user base it will be easy for our clients to reach out to us.

  • 2. Strategies to deliver customer service through social Media platforms

    By using the social media platforms, companies can stay connected with customers all the time and build sustained relationships.A vibrant and proactive social media presence can help in enhancing customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and advocacy.

  • 3. Enhance your Service response time

    • Research common requests to identify and anticipate them
    • Set your first auto responder
    • Use time-based notifications to ensure no email is lost or delayed
    • Prepare response templates for customer service and use shortcuts to reduce the time it takes to compose each email
    • Categorize and prioritize incoming emails
    • Create a FAQ page
  • 4. Capitalizing on social media that provides unrestricted access to customer review

    • Many customers voluntarily leave their feedback about brands on social media. Building relationships with customers and proactively seeking feedback can garner positive reviews.
    • Collecting customer feedback through social media is much easier and faster than email or phone calls.
    • Social media customer service often results in user-generated content (UGC) to help others make better purchasing decisions. Product and service teams can leverage on this knowledge to close potential gaps in delivering positive customer experience.
    • Informal conversational surveys often work well with users as a source for surveys instead of a questionnaire.
  • 5. Incentives such as Reward Points can motivate customers to review specific products, processes and services.

    Using social media for creating a positive image

    • Brand image is a term that describes the perception of a company’s brand among both potential and existing customers.
    • Awareness of the target audience.
    • Identifying the needs of the customers
    • Determining the brand’s value proposition
    • Focus on the value proposition to showcase the brand’s distinguishing features against competition. Planning marketing campaigns that communicate the identified brand values.
  • 6. Always have unique selling concept for different platforms

    Depending on the social media platform you choose, you can engage your customers in many different ways. For example, self-service resources, messaging apps, social engagement, live chat, chatbots, SMS, and more.Capabilities like this helps in delivering excellence in our product and service offerings and enhances customers’ experience with the company.

Key points to build your servicing capabilities for social Customer Service

Find and serve your customers on their favorite social channels. Method is as follows.

  • Identify the Social Media Platforms Your Audience Seeks Relief From

    Different platforms attract different audiencesIdentify the social platforms your customers visit most frequently. Then create a handle specifically for social media customer support (eg @CONCLOTechnology_help).

  • Find out why your customers are contacting you

    Conduct an audit to reveal the typical reasons customers contact your company.2.1. Know about the detailed information2.2. Solve the customer issue2.3. Give feedback or praise, this helps create playbooks and cadences for efficiently handling client cases.

  • Create your own company hashtag for service requests

    Create hashtags specific to your service team to make it easier for customers to find past cases. Use keywords to enable speech recognition so that your service worker can be notified when intervention is required.

  • Solve the right way to react the negative feedback

    By properly handling negative comments, you can turn dissatisfied customers into brand ambassadors. Quickly review negative comments and posts and move conversations into personal chat boxes, so service agents can resolve customer issues directly.

  • Promote UGC

    An incentive for customers to rate products and services and tag other users in their posts. It helps you build a repository of useful self-service content.

  • Publish Educational Content Regularly

    Help customers find their own answers with product how-to videos, explainer posts, and more.

Process to Improve Customer Satisfaction

  • High customer satisfaction is the business goal and key to success of any brand
  • Turn your customer feedback into action.
  • Improve the company Products and services.
  • Always update your progress as customers request features that you can’t deliver yet. This helps keep customer satisfaction high.
  • Keeping your customers informed shows that your business values customer feedback.