5 Tips for Proving Customer Service on Social Media

           In the age of Social Media, we are more connected than ever before. This connectivity extends beyond just friends and family but includes businesses and corporations. Naturally, with this connectivity comes an opportunity to provide customer service across social media, and I think it’s a great idea to do so. In an article on Hootsuite called “Social Media Customer Service: Everything You need to Do it Well”, Christina Newberry shares a lot of compelling facts that argue why it’s a great idea to offer customer service over social media. Here are a few stats she has shared: “More than 150 million people message businesses through Instagram Direct every month.” And 83% of people expect companies to respond to a social media question or complaint within a day.” Below you can find Five actionable tips for providing customer service on social media.

           First and foremost, it is extremely important to create some guidelines for how your organization will approach customer service on social media. One thing to consider is who will be responsible for the customer service provided on social media. Will you have a strategy for frequently asked questions? When will your brand be available? What is an appropriate response time? What action and decisions are the employees empowered to take? 

What will you do to protect the brand’s voice? In the article “Why You Need a Social Media Customer Service Plan”, Jenn Chen writes “It’s possible to have a pun-tastic attitude for original tweets and a more conciliatory tone for customer complaints. To keep this in check, document, and create a voice strategy so everyone on your team knows how to represent the brand on social media.”

“It’s possible to have a pun-tastic attitude for original tweets and a more conciliatory tone for customer complaints. To keep this in check, document, and create a voice strategy so everyone on your team how to represent the brand on social media.”

Jenn Chen, Sprout Social

           Second, we recommend setting up a separate social media handle dedicated to customer service. For example, your business name might be “Pete’s Clothing” but you might set up an additional social media handle called “Pete’s Clothing – Help” or something along the lines.  This helps by removing excessive negativity from your organization” main page. This also makes it easier to separate who manages what. For example, your social media department might manage the main account while your customer service team manages your customer service page.

Third, we suggest monitoring conversations by using keyword trackers and other similar tools. This allows you to provide great customer service to someone who may not be expecting it and it may allow you to diffuse a situation before it escalates. Also, it allows your organization to look like the hero in a situation that might have been destructive for your organization if it went on unaddressed.

Fourth, keep great records of your interactions and customer service provided on social media. This information can come in handy for some reasons. If you see any trends forming, your organization can pivot to prevent the issues from continuing to reoccur. It also might be useful to better understanding who your customers are, what they have purchased, or past interactions you may have had. You also may need to pull up information about past interactions with the customer to better serve them.

Finally, the last tip is knowing when to transition from a public conversation to a private message. There’s a lot of good that comes from keeping the conversation public such as indirectly being able to help other customers who may be having a similar experience or just simply making a positive impression on another consumer because of your organizations’ willingness to remedy an issue. However, sometimes there are some compelling reasons to turn to private messages such as privacy requirements, more information that needs to be obtained, or if the customer is agitated.  

In closing, we highly recommend organizations and businesses to embrace the age of social media and connectivity and choose to provide customer service through social media. However, before doing so we suggest considering these five tips to ensure better success in doing so. Create guidelines that outline your organizations approach to customer service on social media, create a separate social media handle dedicated to customer service, monitor conversations relating to your business, keep accurate records about your interactions, and lastly have guidelines in place so you know when to move a public conversation into a private message. By following these and tips recommendations an organization you will be in a great position to start providing great customer service.