Tools To Use Social Media has always been intended as offering a means to a two-way conversation, or social connection. However, over the course of time, we are now seeing social media platforms used to grow business by:

1. Listening to consumers
2. Boosting brand awareness
3. Marketing products or services

Listening to your consumers

Many businesses moved online in 2020 and are struggling to provide quality social media customer service. Don’t be one of them! Hearing what consumers are saying about your brand or company on social media is very useful, but exploring the way to provide Customer Services through social media, whether you’re just getting started or taking it to a subsequent level may be a vital tool to possess. You just need to work out where to focus your time and resources. Ultimately, creating a brand with an inclusive and helpful community via social media is the goal of any business.

Whilst marketing efforts may help to drive traffic to social media sites, it is important to stay up to date with current trends to understand where else the consumers may be socializing. It has evolved that the most prominent Social Media platforms people are using are Instagram,  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so this is where companies tend to plug and advertise their products.

Reply as quickly as possible on social media

Most forms of customer support via phone and email are not typically expected to be available 24/7. Whereas tech-savvy young consumers tend to communicate via social media channels as opposed to communicating over the phone or by email as this is the fastest method to get a response nowadays. As a result, 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes. This means responding to inquiries, reviews, and complaints as quickly as possible is the best social media customer service strategy.
Through most social media platforms, you will find allocated customer service staff who can receive instantaneous notification of when a customer messages you or submits a post and are then prompted to respond back immediately.

Customer service using social media is actually the closest a company can provide a totally personal service and at the time removes commonly placed customer annoyances like keypad menus for customer service phone lines and automatic email replies.

From the customer’s point of view, there is already an immediate channel of communication open for further contact meaning that they won’t need to undergo the rigmarole of calling the customer baseline and risk chatting with a special individual who isn’t conversant in their issue.

Instead, they will simply reply to the company’s most up-to-date message, discuss their post, or do whatever is most appropriate for the platform in question, and therefore the allocated customer service advisor from the company will have access to the complete string of communication so far.

From the company’s point of view, Tools To Use Social Media from a Customer Service perspective is far easier to use to communicate and deal with a customer’s query effectively and quickly thereby providing customer satisfaction far quicker.

Which Social tools should be used to support customer service?

There are some Tools To Use Social Media you can use support to your customer service:

Messaging apps: like Facebook Messenger, are a great way to speak directly with your customers. Have them contact you personally so you can handle their matter more privately.

Live chat: may be a great option for customer service because it provides quicker responses from real live chat representatives.

Chatbots: Like live chat are perfect for efficiently addressing customer concerns. Chatbot responses are immediate, so customers do not have to wait long for a response, even within the middle of the night. Using chatbots is additionally cheaper than hiring human customer service representatives. However, because there is no real representative on the opposite side of the conversation, the response given may lack a personal touch.

Tracking systems: Certain software and services measure the impact of your customer service efforts on social media, telling you how long it took for your business to reply to messages or resolve issues. Using this facility will help you to improve your stats wherever necessary.

Set up a dedicated handle for social media customer support

Your customer service team can deal with a consumer’s query or complaint client far faster and in more detail than your social marketing team can. This is why it’s a good idea for brands to use a separate social account to offer social media customer service solutions.

Find and monitor conversations relevant to your business

Many consumers will post messages about your business online without tagging any of your social accounts. Some of these posts might warrant a customer service response which means that you can’t be tagged in on social media customer support requests. So try to monitor conversations wherever possible about your brand. Then you can respond to customers who have a service issue -even if they didn’t reach out to you.

Be proactive

If customers regularly contact you with the same questions, then you need to provide some information resources. Your social media customer service channels are great places to share educational content. For example, a how-to video or best practices blog post. It’s all about helping your customers learn how to get the most from your products.

If you offer an online service, you could also post updates about any known service issues. These resources will help reduce the number of support requests that come in. They’re also an easy section to refer people with simple support questions.

Develop a social media customer service policy:

Customer service policies ensure all employees understand what is expected from them when addressing dissatisfied customers or any questions and concerns customers may need. Make sure that you create a separate social media customer service policy for your team to ensure that their efforts are reliable and consistent.