Happy customers are the lifeblood of any business. The more happy customers you have, the more valuable promoters you get as satisfied people are glad to recommend a business to their friends or family.
No matter how good or popular your product/service is, you may still have customers (both potential and existing ones) who have questions about your business. Answering these questions in a timely manner is one of the most effective ways to provide customers with better customer service and therefore increase their brand loyalty and trust. Over the long haul, this also means more leads, sales, and business growth.
If you provide customer support via live chat or over the phone, that’s great. But it’s not enough to increase customer satisfaction as modern users reach out to businesses on communication channels they use more often. In other words, they may want to contact your business on social media platforms.
Why Provide Excellent Social Customer Service?
With a variety of options on the market, people choose companies that can provide a good customer experience. According to one research on the importance of customer service, 76% of customers want to buy from brands that understand their needs, 91% of people will leave without warning after having bad customer service, and 72% of users share good experiences with others.
Believe it or not, more and more people expect companies to provide social customer service for the main two reasons:
- People use social media accounts daily
- People follow their favorite brands on social media
What is more, social media apps collect personal data which gives you an opportunity to understand your followers better and personalize customer service. What is more, here are six ways to provide excellent social customer service:
- Make the Most Out of Bio Links
Practically every social media network offers a clickable link in the bio section so that visitors and followers can get redirected to the right website page and learn more about the company, its values, products, etc.
When it comes to social customer service, this bio link can help you a lot. Whether you have an in-house customer support team who monitors social media profiles or not, you can always add a link that leads to your live chat on the website and therefore give your customers an opportunity to get customer support fast.
- Provide Followers with Several Contact Options
Although most people reach out to brands on social media platforms they use more often, they may want to contact your company on another platform or even via phone to contact your company immediately. The more contact options you offer, the better. Thus, it’s important to provide followers with all contact options you have.
Check out how AirFrance did it:
Not only can you write about contact options in the bio section, but you can also add contact buttons like your email address or phone number to make it easier (and faster) for your visitors to tap on the best contact options for them and contact you fast.
- Reply to All Comments and Direct Messages
When people leave their thoughts–both positive and negative ones–in the comment section or via direct messages, they want to share their customer experience with other customers and your brand so that you can implement their customer feedback. This means customers expect to get a reply from your company. As a result, it’s important to monitor all comments and direct messages to communicate with your target audience who needs your attention.
One of the best ways to provide timely responses to all comments and messages is to train your customer support team so that all customer service representatives know how to reply to customer inquiries. For example, if you receive similar questions/concerns over and over again, you can think about creating quick replies–a feature that allows businesses to send canned responses to frequently asked questions.
- Think About FAQ and Share Them on Social Accounts
Having a social media presence on any channel, most companies aim at growing their following. But when it comes to social customer service, the more followers you have, the more customer requests you may receive. This means dealing with customer inquiries can take a lot of time unless you know how to solve their requests fast.
One of the best ways to do it is to think about frequently-asked questions and share your responses on social media profiles so that customers can find answers without your help. Here’s a good example of this strategy from Finnair:
Here are several ways to feature FAQs on social media profiles:
- Add a link to your FAQ page on the website
- Create a series of FAQ posts
- Organize a FAQ session and save it as a long-form video
- Hire a Freelance Social Media Moderator
Not every company has a big in-house customer service team who can manage social customer requests on platforms where your brand has social media presence. To make it easier for all your team members to deal with customer requests on social media, you can always use online marketplaces like Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer to find a qualified social media moderator who can manage your social media accounts remotely.
At first glance, it can be difficult to educate your freelance social media moderator on your brand’s tone of voice so that this person could reply to all comments, mentions, and direct messages in the right manner. However, you can always create an ebook where you can write down all principles on brand communication and send it to your moderators via team collaboration software or email.
- Monitor Brand Mentions and Tags
It’s harsh but true: not all people who share their customer experience about your business on social media are your followers and fans.
Many users upload their stories to personal social media accounts to tell their friends and family about these experiences and therefore inform them about the quality of your product or service. This means brands should monitor brand mentions and tags to keep track of all stories and deal with consumers, especially if these customers are dissatisfied.
But, wouldn’t it be great if you could be proactive with gathering customer feedback? The best way to understand your customers’ thoughts when using social media for business promotion is by partnering with social media influencers who can endorse your products on their profiles and encourage their loyal following to share their thoughts about them.
The demand for social customer service is on the rise. More and more customers use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get in touch with brands, ask questions about your products, or even get customer service help. As a result, companies should be ready to provide excellent social customer service that helps to increase customer satisfaction and stay ahead of other competitors who hope for the attention of the same target audience.