Before the advent of the internet, customer service relied mainly on telephone calls. Then came emails, the most direct and effective tool to communicate with customers worldwide, until social media emerged.
Now the numerous digital media platforms are the fastest channels through which customers can seek help. They have beaten other customer care options due to their fast pace and enhanced effectiveness.
Social media is the new home for customer service because it yields great power. Unlike other channels where businesses can ignore client queries, they cannot leave their social media relation unattended as it can ruin their reputation within seconds.
Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have become essential for social media interactions. They have changed the game as one post or tweet is enough for customers to get their voices heard.
Thanks to social media, customers can connect with brands in real-time. So businesses should know the best practices on these platforms to succeed and grow their Instagram following.
To make it easy for you, we list the top 6 ways to take your digital customer service forward. These are proven practices, so keep them at your fingertips and watch your clientele leave with a smile:
6 Best Customer Service Practices for Social Media
1. Brand monitoring.
After setting up any platform, the first step should always be monitoring. This means not only do you keep publishing new content on it, but you also keep an eye on how it’s performing.
The best place to improve customer service is via active brand monitoring. This requires using tools provided within the social media platforms to reply to your viewers politely and in a timely fashion.
Technically your followers or subscribers are your potential customers, so you need to monitor how they interact with your brand and then respond to them accordingly. You can do this by constantly keeping your accounts dashboard and analytics up to date.
Simply put, you can keep your target audience happy by listening to them. This can be done by answering them appropriately and quickly when they contact you. Remember, unread comments and unattended DMs can be a loss of sales.
You can quicken this process and improve efficiency by narrowing down urgent queries using streams. The streams contain relevant keywords, and customers who contact using these words pop up on a priority basis.
2. Optimise social media account
The way your social media look itself is a part of customer service. The words you use and the visuals you place play a crucial role when customers think of contacting you. For example, if you mention a way to contact customer service on your Instagram bio, it can significantly help your followers.
Their brand loyalty will improve if you provide them clear cut ways to solve their problems. When your feed or profile exhibits genuine cooperation, your viewers feel important leading to positive word-of-mouth marketing. So add relevant links and contact detail where they can be seen upfront.
Moreover, instead of sending them from one channel to another and quickly resolving their queries, you also increase the chances of them returning and generating more revenue for you. Thus by optimising your account, you increase your customer’s lifetime value.
3. Engagement Protocol
Protocols are necessary for any area of business. So when it comes to customer service, you must follow the same lead. However, on social media, it is done slightly differently as instead of assigning physical tasks to your team, you provide them with digital assignments.
For example, if you believe answering to Insta DMs is more crucial, you give the most responsible member of your team that task. Moreover, a job requiring more engagement should be handed over to someone with good communication skills.
All this organisation will lead to better and more effective customer service. Your responses to your client will determine the success, so be consistent when applying these protocols.
4. Manageable Information
Social media can lead to information overload. To prevent that and help your clients reach you faster, make it more manageable. Here are some ways to do so:
- Set a reply time frame. Establishing beforehand that your response may take 24 hours or so will satisfy the customer, and they won’t keep checking their phones after every 2 minutes.
- All your social media platform should have one consistent voice. For example, if your Instagram DMs are being answered in a playful tone, your Twitter handle should also be managed similarly. Stick to your brand voice throughout the communication process.
- If there are specific queries you don’t wish to address, or they offend the spirit of your brand, don’t leave them unattended. Just leave a diplomatic reply which can silence the reader without offending them. If you encounter a very sensitive issue that can cause legal trouble, use pre-scripted answers approved by lawyers.
- When solving customer queries, always use open-ended questions to encourage positive engagement. Reply to them meaningfully, yet keep the conversation running. The longer you keep them engaged, the more chances your business will make a sale.
- No matter how well the customer service team performs, every business comes across trolls and abusive users. Thus it’s always safe to have a policy in place before dealing with them. However, as you cannot ban all offensive and critical followers, decide how to respond accurately.
5. Quick Replies
Many social media platforms, especially Instagram, have a ‘quick replies’ feature. It allows businesses to automate responses to specific common questions in their messengers. It’s a way to prevent you from typing the same answers all over again.
It is beneficial as these instant replies resolve most of the queries in real-time. As most customers have similar questions, you can ready answers beforehand and stock them via quick replies. Then, anytime a user asks that question, the pre-prepared responses pop up.
However, this is not a chatbot feature, and there has to be someone on your team to answer other questions. Only basic queries can be resolved through it, and for detailed and personalised answers, a human has to be present.
6. Have a FAQs section
When you use social media platforms for customer service, especially Instagram, you will notice that viewers often leave similar queries in the comments section. Their patterns are very similar.
However, if you began answering all of them then and there, it would look odd and reflect poor etiquette. So instead of publicly replying to every user, you can guide them to a FAQs section where they can find all their answers in one place.
These FAQs can be placed as a highlight on your profile or a post on your feed. You can research the most asked question, compile answers to them in one go, and then publish these together. Every time you see a customer raising similar issues, just share the FAQ link.
These aggregate responses improve your customer service and save you time. They act as internal documents, which your support team can use as a reference. They can also help marketers gain insights on recurring pain points and track customer needs.
Final Thoughts
What are you waiting for? We hope we made it established that social media channels are crucial for customer service, so do not delay to use social media to your advantage. Keep your customers happy by using these 6 approaches, and watch as these platforms help you expand your business.
Remember, social media platforms are not just for content creation. They are equally vital for building connections, and for that, you require top-notch customer service. So prioritise it and maintain consistency.
Offer your customers the opportunity to directly connect with you delightfully and entertainingly and win their loyalty forever. Sometimes only a little leg work is required to convert followers into paying clients, and that work is done via customer service. So get it right and watch your clientele flourish.
