If you run a business and consider social media a necessary evil, this article may persuade you to invest more time, effort, and heart into your presence.
Social media play an important, if often underestimated, role in the SME sector. Reaching the end-user or business partner has never been easier, cheaper, or more effective. Ignoring or neglecting this vital channel is a mistake, especially in customer service.
As a result, social media have become a platform for debates, image crises, or even interesting brand campaigns. At the same time, many brands overlook it in favor of community involvement, awareness raising, or increasing message reach.
- What is the importance of social media to customer service?
- Why use social media for customer support?
- SM customer service recipe
- How to evaluate social media customer service?
What is the importance of social media to customer service?
The increasing use of mobile devices, familiarity with social media, and their entry into new spheres of our lives have all resulted in a shift in consumer behavior and expectations. Audiences expect instantaneous brand responses, and patience is not one of their virtues. Their private social media activity makes them expect the same from the brands they follow. They also know that their voice will be heard on social media, which is why they choose this method. The variety of interactions allows companies to improve products, services, and communication.
Why use social media for customer support?
- Instead of making flyers to reach your targeted audience, social media allows you to target specific groups with specific content and advertising campaigns.
- For those interested, properly developed and managed profiles can also be used as a customer service channel.
- Faster, easier, and more accurate way to build a customer base.
- Active social media presence helps brand recognition and positioning
- Social media can provide quick feedback on products or services, as well as valuable feedback and information that can help improve the offer.
- Using social media, you can quickly identify hot topics and products – and use them for your own purposes.
SM customer service recipe
Social media customer service has its own rules. First, it is important to establish procedures. The brand’s social media presence is prepared using response templates, crisis scenarios, and crisis prevention. Planning coherent communication and defining the target audience’s tone of voice are equally important. Having current information about your own products and services is critical for quickly responding to customer requests or complaints.
Using chatbots (virtual assistant modules) in Facebook Messenger may be a more advanced solution. Their role is to support customer service, not to replace a live person on the other side of the screen.
How to evaluate social media customer service?
The proper analysis and optimization of collected data is critical in customer service activities to improve customer-brand interaction and identify bottlenecks. Actions will be ineffective without a well-planned strategy, and optimization will be impossible without careful measurement.
Analyze:
- Response rate
- Response time
- Negative feedback
- Community ranking
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Response rate
In fact, a low value should force you to rethink your customer service strategy or better train your social media reps.
appoint moderators, spread good practice, set up on-call times and choose the tools to help with a large number of inquiries.
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Response time
The better the rate and response time, the faster you answer your audience’s questions.
TIP: Creating clear procedures will improve response times and quality of social media content. It is also worthwhile to work on the flow of information, creating a package of materials about your own products and services, as well as response templates and a list of key contacts.
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Negative feedback
Indicates how much negative feedback your audience gives you. It examines whether users hide posts, report content as spam, or stop liking the page. Inadequate communication or publication can cause a high rate.
Monitor and optimize your social media activities. Test different post types to see which works best. Don’t be afraid to ditch strategies that don’t work and cause your website to lose visitors.
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Community ranking
The statistics in the community ranking help you find the most active and engaged fans. This will help you better understand your target group, their interests, and thus deliver better content and results.
TIP: Based on your target group’s commitment level, offer them activities they want to participate in.
Social media is not only great for marketing, but also for customer service and image building. Exemplary customer service is frequently discussed in social media, conferences, presentations, and books. Customers and potential buyers are increasingly convinced of the brand’s well-thought-out communication and efficient problem-solving.
But the stick has two ends – a person may quickly abandon a brand that did not support him and ignored his attempts to contact him. Remember this when planning your marketing campaigns.
In Summary
Customer service is vital in any business. Without it, your customers will be dissatisfied and may not return. But how do you know if social media customer service works? The key is to understand your audience’s expectations. We’ve given you some tips on how to easily measure customer satisfaction!