The necessity of leveraging on Social Media cannot be overemphasized given the fact that social media has become the mouth piece of the world in the contemporary society. Contrary to what many people continue to regard as a publicity stunt, social media customer service is now a business reality that service oriented organizations need to embrace to improve on their delivery on services and hence make loyal customers out of their clients. This article reviews the importance of Social media Customer service, how it can be of help, and how one can going to manage customers through Social media.
Impact Of Social Customer Service
Social media customer service means the process of solving customer’s questions, critiques, and complaints on social media pages of the company, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Hence, unlike other customer services such as phone, email, or any other similar medium that requires quick contacting of the customer, social media accessible in this aspect as a real-time communication.
Customer Service then, Customer Service now.
Traditionally, customer relations were a personal and local affair where customers engaged the service provider through a direct contact in form of a physical conversation or a phone call. Later with the advancement in technologies like internet, email and live chat came into the picture. Still, the relatively new phenomenon of social networks offered a new perspective, and allowed businesses to reach the clients in their preferred online territory. It has introduced a kind of flexibility in the way companies handle customer service, especially as the latter is becoming more and more oriented toward the customer’s contact.
Advantages Of Social Media Customer Service
1. Enhanced Accessibility and Convenience
Customers can easily engage with related businesses at the comfort of their homes, and at any given time. This constant accessibility ensures that the customer questions are answered as soon as possible hence improving on the customer satisfaction level. As a result of having easy access to the site, customers are willing to indulge in interacting with the brands as well.
2. Real-Time Interaction
Making a direct connection to the customer is one of the biggest benefits offered by SMCs – and it is real-time interaction. Contrary to information dissemination and communication channels that require one to wait for a long time before being attended to or receiving a response, social media is viable as it is real time. This immediacy assists to solve various matters promptly and also ensures that the client is active.
3. Account Brand Enhancement and Interaction
Another type of engagement, namely, active work in social networks helps in customer support while also increasing brand awareness. , interacting with the customers through the social media platforms assist in creating a positive image that the brand promotes. It also creates a culture of your brand which incites more people into engaging with your brand thus feedback is encouraged.
4. Cost-Effective Solution
Still, it is important to note that there are several advantages of handling customer service through social media including the fact that it would be cheaper as compared to the conventional methods. We believe it minimizes the number of call centres and also enables one to deal with many issues at different centres. Different social media tools also used foster customer insights by getting real information about the clients and their preferences for strategic management processes.
Approaches to Social Media Customer Service
1. Set Proper Guidelines for Use of Social Media
One should develop an effective policy to govern the tender of handling social media customer services. This includes reaction period, how the agent speaks, and how, when, or if they moving up the problem to a manager. When customer expectations are well managed, then a well defined policy is always helpful in making sure that customers are served uniformly.
2. Regularly interact with your social media pages
Monitor your brand mentions, comments, or messages through social media monitoring to keep abreast with what transpires in the social media world. One of the benefits of the regular monitoring is that no query from customers is left unheard and can thereby be attended to. Sites like Hootsuite, Sproutsocial and Brandwatch can go a long way in helping in this process.
3. Respond Promptly and Professionally
Regarding the cases of social media customer service, it is very important to be timely and professional. It is possible to set a rule to reply to customers’ requests as soon as possible, if not within several hours. Always be polite and formal to the customers even if you are responding to complaints or negative feedback.
4. Personalize Your Responses
Remarkable importance can be attributed to personalization as it helps to improve the level of customer satisfaction. Greetings to customers and to follow up on issues with them it is recommended that one addresses them according to their names. The element of the personal touch goes a long way to make the customers feel appreciated and properly attended to.
5. Utilize Automated Responses Wisely
It is effective for stuff such as thanking the client for posing a query or whereproviding standard information. However, make sure that an automated message is then followed complemented with a live interaction in order to meet the needs of the customer.
6. Social Media Training for Your Staff
Provide coaching to your social media staffs so that you and they know or understand how to properly address customers. Some of the content that needs to be included in the training is communication skills, handling conflicts and converting communication skills into social media tools. It is essential to train the staff so that its members know well about the services to be delivered to customers.
7. Leverage Customer Feedback
I believe that customer feedback is like a gold mine which could be found in social media. This feedback helps in reviewing the products or services in order to determine the faults that need to be fixed. The inclusion of feedback is an excellent way of revealing that customers are valued and the fact helps in the promotion of a good relationship.
Possible Problems with Social Media Support
1. Managing Negative Feedback
Social media puts your brand to the public domain and in cases where you give a wrong impression of the brand, the negative comment will go viral. Issues of complaints should be handled professionally and at the same time, should be handled as early as they are likely to arise. Recognize the problem, make an apology if it is required and then consider giving a remedy for it. The positive spin gives your brand an enhanced look for those that would have otherwise been associated with a negative experience.
2. Dealing with Large Number of Interactions
Responding to numerous customers at once or in case of stock, it is quite difficult to manage. It is therefore important to make sure that your team is well prepared in handling such scenarios. Some of the strategies that can be employed to deal with the overload include providing automatic replies to frequently asked questions as well as adopting other supplementary support channels.
3. Maintaining Consistency Across Platforms
Generating proper content density is important for there to be consistency in the message being passed to the audience in the different social media platforms used in a business. Make sure you’re curating those policies across the platform and that all parties know and are following the rules of that policy.
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