6 Strategies Behind Great Customer Service On Social Media

If your customer service has not gone social yet, your business is clearly missing out on a lot. Today’s customers are technologically advance and social media savvy. Traditional CRM has taken a backseat and people take to social media to rant about their bad experiences, which considering the number of people on social media, spreads like wildfire. What most companies are missing out on is tracking these unhappy customers and stopping the fire before it spreads.
Providing great customer service through social media can be a task, especially if you are not associated with the right CRM company. The world is getting smarter and hence it is a smarter choice to switch from traditional CRM techniques to social CRM, where companies not just listen to all mentions made about your company but also allows you to respond immediately without any lag of finding the message.
Here are a few strategies every company needs to adopt for providing great customer service:
ENSURE IMPECCABLE LISTENING
Your customers might be talking about your brand on various social media platforms and it is not enough to keep track of just Facebook and Twitter (although these are the most celebrated and influential platforms). It is highly possible that a well known blogger has posted a hate blog about your brand, and is receiving huge traction. Many people also prefer visiting review sites such as Mouthshut.com before purchasing a new product or if they are facing any problems, to find out if other people are facing the same. Negative reviews about your brand might not just impact your new prospects but also lead to a huge uproar about your products through cross platform sharing. Keeping a constant eye on all platforms can help curtail the damage extensively. Immediate actions taken to address the problems of the people or at a minimum level address the problems provides a more comforting feel to the customers and helps build better customer relationships.
DEFINE A PROFILE FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE
It is important to keep your marketing messages separate from your customer service ones, to avoid confusion and to perform more targeted operations. Newer companies like PayTm and Flipkart has been successful in establishing a separate platform to address queries and complaints, allowing customer service agents to improve their response rate and time. This also lets the social media marketing professionals focus on their work without getting interfered by irrelevant content.
It also makes the reporting process simpler, by providing distinct parameters for measurement, namely how people are responding to the marketing endeavors/campaigns vs. people’s perception of the brand based on their experience.

BRAND AWARENESS
Transparency and the ability to relate to, is something that all customers seek from a brand. This leads to a lot of dependency between the marketing and customer service teams. Brands need to clearly communicate about the newest campaigns, offers, contests, change in hierarchy and any other endeavours. This can be done through the social media marketing channel, press releases, ads, direct marketing like e-mails and text messages. This helps in keeping the customers aware about the changes that a brand constantly undergoes and hence reduce pressure on the customer service teams. It is always better to provide complete information from the beginning of a new endeavour than provide answers to thousands of queries later!

SIGN IN /SIGN OUT CLEARLY
Most companies have set up a 24/7 social media customer service desk to make sure all the complaints and queries get responded to without any delay. After all, social media is all about being real time! However, if you are a company which does not provide round-the-clock customer service it is better to keep your customers aware about this. It’s easy, all that the executives need to do is sign in and sign out clearly. Make use of a good morning picture or just say Hi! We are here to help you. Also when it is time to leave make sure you close all complaints that come in before the closing time and sign off with a Good night or a Goodbye! This lets your customers know when they should reach you with their queries and also avoids clogging of complaints over the night, making the process more organised for the customer service executives.
WALK THE EXTRA MILE
If complete customer satisfaction is what your company is seeking, make sure to reach out to your customers first. It is best to monitor what your customers are talking about your brand and knock their door first to solve their problems, before they reach you. This shows that you actually care for your customers and bridges the emotional gap. This not only helps in building a relationship with the customer but also seeds for some good “word of mouth”.
Acknowledging customers after the problem is taken care of is also equally important. This increases positive sentiment about your brand and builds on the trusts factor for prospective customers.
DON’T BE A ROBOT
There was a time when most companies had found a way to reduce their first response time by generating automated responses to complaints. Consumers today, have become smarter and have learnt to do their bit of research before reaching out to a company. Mechanical replies and canned responses tick off customers immensely in today’s date. Therefore adding a human touch to each message sent out can help curb this problem. Adding a human touch could include ending the message with the agent’s name, adding an emoticon every now and then, accompanying the apologetic messages with images and the like.
This helps in making the customer feel important and also gives the vibe of their problems getting solved and not just being acknowledged for no further action.