Abhishek Chauhan
Social media have become a part and parcel in our lives. In fact, it has also become a prime channel for the businesses to connect and interact with their aficionados. Social media marketing has become an important part of the online marketing strategy that brands adorn to make their mark in a competitive industry.
The prime benefit of indulging in social media marketing is that any company, big or small, gets the same platform to market its products/services. As most of the leads are found using social media platforms, it becomes a lot easier to find them here with exclusive social media marketing. Everything seems to be fine but there is a catch. Social media customer service is extremely important. It just takes a day to bring down the reputation of a company if anything gets viral. Hence, interacting with the customers and leads and maintaining a brilliant social media customer service platform is mandatory.
Here is a list of 7 best practices for maintaining excellent social media customer service to follow.
- Choose the right social media platform
Your business will need a proper social media platform that your customers prefer. Consider doing a survey to find the most suitable platform your customers think right for communication and business.
You can send an email and start a survey. Add the social media platforms in the options for vote in Google Forms or Typeform and then get the best idea of what the customers want. You will not have to spend a dime on this. Use email IDs provided by the customers and leads.
You can also hire a social media marketing service to conduct this survey. The service provider will also do his research to find out the most potent mix of social media platforms your business can use.
- Monitoring mentions
Another brilliant practice is to monitor the mentions done by the customers online. Find out what the customers are talking about. If they are praising, be a part of it by showing your gratitude. If they are tagging your social media image for certain issues and mismanagement, make sure you respond and resolve them. Reaching out to the customers in detail will strengthen your brand image in the social media world.
You can hire a social media management service to do research on the mentions or to make a team respond to such mentions. Learn how you can use them to gain momentum in doing business or creating your own space in a competitive market.
- Set up a social media management team
When your brand is growing, make sure you have a team that can manage the social media image properly. Responding to what the customers have to say and resolving issues online faster will surely give your brand a personality. The personification of your business will lead to escalated trust and satisfaction of the customers.
Most reputed companies consider outsourcing the social media handling requirements to an agency for better management. This helps the companies to handle the issues faster, talk to the customers more often, respond to any mention better, and to make a brilliant image in the market. Social media is the best place where you can market your brand remarkably if you have a good customer service plan.
- Monitor conversations
Another prime strategy is to monitor important conversations that are drawing significant crowds and attention. Check the genre of the conversation and decide whether you can be a part of it or not. If it is about products/services, learn from the conversation by using social media research tools. There are many companies that offer such services.
Using this service, you can also provide service to the customers and take part in their conversations. Resolution of serious issues and mentioning it on the social media platform will create a brilliant image. In fact, customers, who have not thought of reaching out to you regarding the issues, will find your proactive approach quite appreciable. The level of customer loyalty will automatically increase.
- Creating guidelines for social media profiles
Social media customer support is very important for a company’s image. There are opportunities and challenges that a business faces from such service. Apart from investing in such a service, you will also have to set guidelines that are compatible with your company guidelines.
Remember to incorporate company values in the guidelines and make sure they should be followed. Here is what you need to consider as guidelines.
- The tone of communicating with a customer
- Definite response time to be followed in different social media channels
- Proper answers to FAQs
- SOPs to handle particular issues
- Protocols to handle an escalated issue in a better way
- Message approval process
The voice or message tone matters a lot. Social media customer service platform is a sensitive matter and needs to be handled professionally.
- Things can be taken offline when needed
Considering solving problems or issues online is sometimes not appropriate to solve a problem. When things needed to be taken offline, do it and try listening to the issues in a better way. Sometimes, it is not possible for AI-operated chatbots to resolve a problem. Sometimes, even the customer care executives need to take the matter into their hands physically and ask for permission to call. This action should be realized and implemented to stop making your customers frustrated.
- Knowledge pool
Customers consider access to a knowledge pool quite beneficial. Raising support tickets and solving them will take much less time when you have the right knowledge pool to redirect your customers. The ticket raisers will find themselves redirected to the articles referring to a common issue. The problem will get resolved faster.
Verdict
These are the top 7 social media customer service practices that every brand needs to incorporate into their digital management strategy. Developing and maintaining a brand image is a daunting task. You will need to hire a social media marketing service to provide better customer support on social media platforms.
