Social Media Customer Service: How to Do It Right

You already know you should be using social media – but you might not know exactly how to use it. One of the best uses for social media is to provide outstanding customer service, and here’s how you can do that successfully.

Constantly Search for Mentions

Use a social media monitoring tool to search for mentions of your brand and your products on social media. The aim of this is to reply quickly as soon as someone mentions your brand, especially if they have a complaint or they are ranting.

Sometimes people will not mention you directly, and they may just make a passing mention your company name or your CEO. A tool like Hootsuite can pick up on these, allowing you to get in quickly and resolve problems or answer questions fast.

Have Some Resources Ready

If you see the same questions and concerns crop up regularly, consider creating some dedicated resources that answer them.

For example, you could create a detailed guide on your website that covers common issues your customers have, and you can then link to this directly in your response to provide a more detailed answer in the moment.

The added bonus is that it will help people to find answers before they contact you, saving you time.

Use Twitter Direct Messages

DMs on Twitter can be a fantastic way to answer customer questions and provide support. They provide customers with an easy way to contact you without having to go to your website and send an email or fill out a form.

There’s another benefit: if someone is complaining, it’s often a good idea to make the conversation private. An angry customer ranting on Twitter is not the sort of thing you want everyone to see.

However, you will need to change your settings so that you can receive messages from any Twitter user without you having to follow them. Then the customer can contact you directly and you won’t have to follow them first.

You can even add a message button to your website. That way, customers can contact you privately with their questions, and it provides them with an easy way to get in touch if they are already Twitter users.

Highlight Problems Before They Arise

You can also use social media to send updates about potential problems before customers experience them. For example, if your website is going to experience downtime for maintenance, send out updates a few days or weeks in advance.

Of if some important dates are coming up that your customers need to prepare for, update your social channels with this. Anything where your customers could benefit from an advance warning will be appreciated, and it can help to reduce the number of angry customers getting in touch.

Respond with a Video

When someone asks a question or makes a comment on social media, you might want to answer with a quick video instead of a written response.

This can be very effective. Not only will it look impressive, but it can often be quicker than writing a response, so you get to make a positive impression with greater ease.

Have Fun

Where possible, show your sense of humour in your customer service, which can be a great way to win over customers on social media.

This is a great example from Samsung where a Canadian man asked for a free phone in exchange for a drawing of a dragon. When it went viral, Samsung sent him a phone branded with his drawing.

That then went viral, creating a very affordable way for Samsung to get some great publicity, and it also showed that they have a sense of humour.

So do something unexpected and surprise your customer in a positive way – and it could get you some great publicity.

Plan Your Social Customer Service Strategy

Keep these ideas in mind and be prepared to roll with it. If a situation arises that you can take advantage of, like the Samsung example, consider going making something out of it.

But even if it doesn’t, use social media to interact with your customers, answer their questions, and provide them with a convenient channel to communicate with your brand.

As digital marketing consultants, we provide clients with a wide range of complimentary digital marketing service and solutions, from conversion rate optimisation (to increase sales and enquiries from client websites) to PPC management and from SEO marketing to social media marketing – talk to us to find out how we help organisations like yours improve site traffic and, most importantly, revenue!