Solution Guru@ Simplify360 - 7 mins read
Social media and digital customer support mean using social media and other digital channels to provide effective and efficient customer support. Customers currently expect to be able to reach out to a business using social media to get help and a quick response.
In the olden days businesses survived by word of mouth, and they still do, it’s just amplified. The rise of digital channels has given customers the opportunity now to talk publicly to a larger crowd about your business or product, and you need to take advantage of this.
For startups, digital customer support is not just a convenience but a necessity in today’s digital landscape. It encompasses a range of online channels such as email, chat, social media, and self-service portals to provide timely and efficient assistance to customers. By leveraging digital customer service tools and platforms, startups can scale their support operations effectively, even with limited resources. This approach allows them to offer personalized support experiences, gather valuable feedback, and build strong customer relationships from the outset, laying a solid foundation for future growth and success.
Why invest in Social media and digital customer support?
One word: Feedback
Customer feedback matters!
It is incredibly important to know what your customers are saying about your business on social media, especially for startups. If you want your product to stay relevant and fit the customer’s needs, social media is as good as it gets, it is probably the best way to get feedback. It’s not enough just to know what they are saying but to address it as well, no matter if it is good or bad.
But that said, forging a strong relationship with your customers can be challenging, it requires diligent time and patience. At the core of it, you need to be committed to listening to what your customers have to say. To make all this easier having a tool like Simplify360’s omnichannel platform will help you manage your social media and digital customer support in a seamless, time-efficient, and cost-effective way.
To put it simply, investing in a solid social media and digital customer support will yield excellent results that will benefit your business in the long run and right now!
To have the best customer experience, there are a few key questions you need to ask yourself:
How do you find customer comments about your business across various social channels?
You may notice that customers tend to post queries and complaints on Twitter while tagging and sharing your products on Facebook or Instagram, to know and understand this pattern you should run a comprehensive social media audit.
With Simplify360, you can set up a live monitoring stream, it enables you to see all your social media comments and tags and respond to them on one platform.
How can you determine when you should respond and when you shouldn’t?
We all know about trolls, but unfortunately, sometimes it can be difficult for startups to put the time and effort into classifying which comment is trolling and which one is genuine.
Having an AI to determine the sentiment by listening and analysing can save a lot of time. Imagine the time and effort you can save by having a system that tells you which comment to respond to and which ones are tolls.
Well, Simplify360 offers exactly that, we know your time is valuable so let us help you decipher who a customer is and who isn’t.
How do you evaluate this effort?
To evaluate the efforts you’ve put into your customer service you need to measure and report all your customer interactions. By collecting this data you can see what the frequently asked questions are or the most common comment or feedback, both positive and negative. This will give you a qualitative report.
After resolving customer issues send them a Customer Satisfaction (CSat) Survey via email. Ask them if they were satisfied with the service they received, getting resolutions via social media, what efforts you can improve and etc. This will give you a quantitative report, which can help you advocate for more resources to be offered to customers via social media.
Apart from these basic questions to target, there are two things you should do:
Know which channel your customers use most
This can be done by identifying your target audience. For example; if your target audience is the younger generation, let’s say from 18-24, there is a safe bet that Instagram would be the most popular and effective way to reach them. Whereas if your target audience is older generations, Facebook is it. Of course, these are basic examples using age as a measure, but you can use several different criteria to identify your audience.
Here’s a quick tip , when you figure out which channel your customers use the most, you can make your own shirt and organize a giveaway to attract even more followers.
Use the right tone and voice while talking to your customers
It can be difficult not to react based on your instinct when a customer is being difficult, but DO NOT BE RUDE! When a customer sounds frustrated It is incredibly important to make sure you are using an apologetic and helpful tone, turn up the empathy.
These aren’t the only situations where you need to use the right tone, with any content meant for customer engagement ensure that your tone is consistent, you can observe how your customers interact with you and draw inspiration. If they use slang and emojis, it is likely that they are fine with brands using more casual language.
Back-end Metrics you should monitor
The brands with the best customer support ensure to track the entire process and system. Continuously monitor the number of tickets in different stages.
New tickets
Keep track of the number of new tickets, if there is a peek you should address it to know why, it could be an indicator that something’s wrong or a positive reaction to something you’ve initiated.
Tickets resolved
The number of tickets resolved should be the same if not higher than the number of new tickets. If it is lower, your CS team is going to face some significant blockage. This is not as ideal as your First response time (FRT) and Turnaround time (TAT) will go up.
Tickets by channel
Filtering tickets by channels will help you identify which channel your customers prefer to communicate with you. Based on this data you can target your efforts and resolutions accordingly.
Ticket by sentiment
Filtering tickets by sentiment can help you identify what the most common customer sentiment is. By filtering tickets based on sentiment you can prioritize which tickets to resolve first.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Other resourceful metrics to measure are the number of replies to resolve customer issues, number of tickets per transaction, and one-touch resolution. Apart from motoring your own metrics, it’s important to monitor your competitor’s as well, Simplify360 provides you with that service. You can track competitor performance and sentiment using our platform.
Simplify360 is an Omnichannel platform that allows businesses to manage and respond to all their Social Media, Messaging Channels, Review sites, and more. With our AI insights, monitor and manage your brand performance.
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