Social Media is more than a place to connect with friends, family and new acquaintances. It’s also a place for existing customers to reach out to brands to seek help when they have questions or concerns.
Customer experience management company, Market Force, explains:
“The emergence of social media has given consumers a whole new way to interact with the brands they love — and a forum to complain when brands disappoint. But what many companies have learned is just how powerful connecting one-on-one with customers can be when those consumers take the time to post.”
According to Hootsuite (May, 2019) below are some social media customer service stats that show how important it is to offer social media customer service solutions:
Customers expect social service
• 67% of customers have used live chat, social media or texting to contact customer service.
• 20.8% of U.S. Internet users say social media is the best channel for customer service.
• More than 150 million people message businesses through Instagram Direct every month.
• 61% of daily messaging app users in the U.S. have messaged a business in the last three months.
• In Brazil, that number increases to 81%.
Social customer support increases customer confidence and loyalty
• 69% of U.S. residents said that directly messaging a company makes them feel more confident about the brand.
• Customers who receive a brand response to their tweets are willing to spend three to 30% more on a future purchase from that business.
Social media customer service protects your brand reputation
• Nearly half of consumers will discuss a bad customer service experience with friends. 24% will do it on social media.
• 81% of Twitter users who don’t get a response from a company will not recommend that company to their friends.
These stats show the importance of treating customers well. As a result, we have put together some tips on delivering better customer service on social media.
1. Reply ASAP. This is not about setting up automated replies for when a customer sends a message. This is about actually being on the ground to take their inquiries, complaints or for addressing other matters and attending to them.
Social media has created an illusion of 24/7 customer service. That is not always an option, but we recommend you update your social media description with support hours – and make sure you keep to them, replying to every message in a maximum of 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Listen. Customers will sometimes mention you online without tagging your company. In such cases, you would not get a notification.
However, that does not mean you should ignore those comments too.
Since you may not have the time to always go searching the timelines for when someone mentions you, using social media listening tools (like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc.) is the way to go. By setting such tools with words to listen for, you get notified whenever someone mentions your brand without actually linking to your social media handles.
3. Be Kind. Post meaningful, respectful comments. Attitudes that reflect acceptance not tolerance. Not all matters should be aired publicly – but not all of your customers/clients will know that. The responsibility lies on you to create a system for what issues to handle publicly or privately.
When appropriate suggest to the customer to send you a direct message so that you can address sensitive issues, such as shipping details, payment issues, complaints and other items that should be resolved privately.
Note: Always acknowledge an issue/post publicly even if you will be resolving it privately. That sends a message to other users that you are taking up the matter, underlining your customer service to your audience.
4. Respond to all posts. Every customer just wants to be heard. It would be against the needs of your customers to ignore their attempts at interactions with you.
Think of it this way: If a customer were to walk into your physical store, even if it was to make enquiries only, you would not ignore them. Why, then, should you ignore a customer online?
So, the next time you get feedback, questions and comments on social media, think about how you can create such a great customer service experience that you create raving fans.
Oh, and by the way, Savvy Social would love to help you develop a custom customer service strategy or set up social media customer solutions and tools to help you create raving fans. Contact us at [email protected].