Social Media Marketing

Social Media For Customer Service?

Social Media Customer Service

Social Media Customer Service

Social media customer service is extremely important. Did you know that 70% of tweets to brands go unanswered? Why should that matter to you? They are your prospects and customers who have questions or issues. If you respond and resolve them you are the hero and get the business. Social media channels are open so that people can create discussions and interact with you as well as each other. This means that anyone who is looking will see when you respond or if you ignore comments. They are less likely to buy from a company that does not respond to complaints.

One of the best things about social media is how inexpensive it is to provide customer service and have the whole world see how great you are at solving problems. The people you solve the problems for, become your external champions. They tell everyone they know how great you are. The reverse of that is true if you are not responding, and let’s be honest people spread bad experiences twice as far and for twice as long as good ones.

Keep in mind that most people don’t look to see whether your company has actually set up a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or any of the others, account to provide support. They just go to one or more of them and post their issues and expect a direct response from you. You need to be monitoring what they are saying about you, even when it’s not posted directly to your account.

The key differences between social media marketing and social media customer service are:

  • Maximize positive interactions versus maximize customer satisfaction
  • Monitor and listen versus resolve issues
  • Shared interaction versus one on one
  • Focus on retweets or comments versus complaint resolution

Make sure you have a well-defined plan for both. They are not interchangeable. Capture, prioritize and assign social interactions to the right team. This will insure you have the most social media customer service success.  There are times when you will need to take a conversation private in order to resolve it appropriately. Make sure you have a plan in place to take this action. The key take away is to respond in real time to events with a thoughtful resolution based answer. Are you ready?