10 Aug 6 Must-Dos for Best-In-Class Social Media Customer Service
If your customers were to grade your customer service on social media, how would your brand do? Would you be an A student? Maybe sliding by with a C? Or would you be trailing behind the rest of the class? If you’re not at the top of your class and on your way to valedictorian, it’s time to rethink the experience your brand is providing your customers on social media.
If you’ve heard feedback from your customers or fellow marketing experts that your brand could improve, let these must-dos below be your guide to an A grade from your customers.
Make Time to Be Available
In order to give your customers, the best experience, you have to be available. This means extending hours outside of the normal 9-5, to ensure your customers will get their concerns addressed during nights, weekends, and holidays. The internet never stops, and your customer service team shouldn’t either.
Image Source: Groove
Make it a Team Effort
Emphasis on team. If you’re truly dedicated to handling customer issues in an effective and efficient manner, you’re going to need an entire team of experts. Your customer care team can’t stop at emails and phone calls these days. Each brand needs a dedicated team on social media that is knowledgeable about not just your brand’s customer service guidelines, but knowledgeable about the social media landscape as a whole. Take a page from Lowes’ book, a client we’re proud to collaborate with, who has a constant thread of replies in their feed to ensure their customers are always receiving the best experience. In short, it takes a village to improve the customer experience on social.
Make it Appropriate
Your team has to know when to keep it professional, and know when you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously. There are plenty of complaints and issues that need a straight-forward, warm response from a customer care expert. Then there are the gems, the ones you can play with, the ones Community Managers dream of getting. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, you are working on Twitter, so don’t be afraid to get cheeky and chill with your customers.
Make it Personal
Do you ever receive a generic response on social media and just want to roll your eyes at the lack of effort? Yeah, we do too and so do your customers. Each response to your customers should have a personal touch, even if you and your team have heard the same complaint 1,984 times before that.
Pro Tip: Have each member of your team sign their responses with their name. Not only does this make tracking responses simple, it ensures the customer knows they’re being taken care of by an actual human being that (gasp) might actually care about their experience. Trust us, it’s worth the extra characters.
Make it Private
Even though we’re talking about social media, let’s take some of the social out of customer service. Once you reply publically to the issue, state that you’d like them to message you privately to steer the conversation to your DMs. This will allow you to gather the information that you need from the customer and handle the complaint accordingly without an audience.
Make it Count
With the million and one brands on social today, how are you going to stand out? If you have a chance to make someone’s day with a something special, do it. It’s totally worth the extra time (and sometimes money) to provide an exceptional customer experience on social media. So go ahead, send someone a personalized dragon phone every once in a while.
Now that you’re equipped with what it takes to give your customers a stellar experience on social media, it’s all about the execution. Easier said than done, right? Well that’s where we come in. From escalation plans to Community Management, we’re here to help you ace this test!
