Social media platforms are getting lots of recognition worldwide as businesses use them to promote their products and services. Organizations have started understanding the importance of influential social media posts for their plans. Therefore, they are developing new methodologies to use social media influencers to increase their online sales.
Many social media websites are established to help users to interact with each other. Social media posts used to be shared for fun, and personal information was shared with friends and colleagues. However, social media websites aren't just another version of social media platforms. Initially, businesses used social media platforms to support their advertising strategies. Social media websites and applications provide excellent customer support to their target audience.
Social media customer service is one of today's most prominent customer support businesses. Rather than writing emails or using contact forms, entrepreneurs like to communicate through social media as they are more accustomed to responding on social media than any other medium.
Since customers rely on and trust social media more than any other customer service, businesses have started prioritizing social media to offer support to their customers.
What is Social Media Customer Service?
Social media customer service refers to using social media tools to resolve customer queries and problems. Social media support is essential because it enables customers to reach your team on the platforms they are already using.
Social media customer service has many forms associated with it. It doesn't just allow your customers to contact you through social media messengers but also will enable them to integrate social media with official websites.
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Social media customer care makes customers feel at home while interacting with the business and brand. They think that they are being given a customized service. Hence, they provide more honest feedback on social media than on any other platform, such as surveys created on a third-party website.
Using social media for customer service has become increasingly common in the digital world today as businesses struggle to build an online presence for their brand. Every company wants to build a presence on the Internet these days. Most businesses are making online sales on the Internet and increasing their revenue. Hence, most companies know how to support customers through social media, also provided via the Internet.
As social media websites evolve, the practices of social media customer care will also become more creative. Since you are a business owner, you must keep up to date with all the changing trends in social media. Businesses that provide social media customer service are usually the most established and win over their competitors.
Social Media Customer Service Best Practices
1) Create a Dedicated Handle for Social Media Customer Support
Your social media customer service will likely respond to client queries faster than your social media marketing team. Usually, the social media customer service on Twitter takes up to 15 minutes to respond. Hence, it can be brilliant for the brands to use a different account to offer social media support.
Image taken from Twitter
This approach is excellent because it helps filter out support and service issues from your primary social media channel. Moreover, it ensures you appoint the right teams to handle suitable social media messages.
If you build a dedicated social channel for customer support, you can include that information in your social media profiles or bios. This approach enables people to know where to go for support-related queries.
People will use your social media handles to contact you for service queries and support issues. They may only check out the brand handle rather than look at your main profile for customer support. If a public message comes to your main social media channel, you can pass it on to the right team and respond from your support account.
2) Monitor Conversations Related to Your Business
Many people post messages about your business without tagging your social media accounts. Some of these posts may require a customer service response.
Although you cannot be tagged on every social media customer service post, you can still reply. The best approach is to monitor all the conversations about your brand. This approach will enable you to answer all the customer queries, even if they have yet to reach out to you.
3) Create Social Media Guidelines
Social media support has different challenges and opportunities concerning social media marketing. However, it doesn't mean you shouldn't have social media guidelines. Your guidelines must align with your company values and the social media marketing team. Your brand guidelines for social media customer service must cover the following aspects:
- Brand voice
- Response time for every social media channel
- Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ)
- Protocol for escalations or customer queries
- Approval of messages or permission management system
4) Be Proactive
If customers ask the same questions regularly, it shows that you need to offer some self-service information resources. Your social media customer service channel can be a great platform to display educational content. For example, you can show a 'how to' video or a blog about best practices. Since you are the content creator, you must do everything to help your customers and ensure they make the most out of your business products. You can inform the audience about any potential service issues if you provide any online service.
Self-service information resources can minimize the number of support requests coming in. They are also an alternative for people who are coming with simple support questions. For example, you can use pinned posts or Instagram story highlights to provide self-help resources.
5) Expand Your Idea About Customer Service
Since you are a business owner, you must understand what things qualify as customer service issues. You can study how different companies use social media for customer service purposes. Customer service is about more than just resolving customer queries and complaints. It is also about ensuring that those customers trust your brand and return to your website for further orders or to gain information.
Customer service can be anything that ensures a connection between the customers and your brand. It is about ensuring that your customers feel secure while buying, using, or recommending your products or services.
6) Manage Customer Expectations
Customers don't expect companies to offer the same social media customer service across all platforms. According to a recent study posted by HootSuite, customers investing more in their services expect a high level of social media support. Another study published by Hootsuite suggested that established airlines offer more social media customer care on Twitter.
How different companies manage social media for customer queries depends on the size of their available teams. However, working on your customer expectations properly is the most important thing. You have to inform your audience about your working hours and how long it will take for you to respond. If there are alternatives for them to resolve their queries instantly, let them know.
Integrate Social Media Into Your Strikingly Website
Since we have discussed earlier, it is always a good habit to integrate social media with your brand or business website. If you have yet to build a professional website to support your business plans, you must head to Strikingly immediately and make one.
Strikingly is a professional website builder that enables you to build a high-quality business website within hours and helps in its online presence.
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Once registered on our platform, you will be in the bracket of 'free plan' users. After signing up for a free account, you can build an essential business website with all the significant features. Eventually, you can integrate social media platforms on your website in the following ways:
- Add social media platforms in the form of icons in your website's footer
- All live chat features on your website through Facebook messenger
- Integrate a social feed section in the last part of your homepage
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Strikingly allows you to add a social feed on your landing page easily. This social feed will add to your marketing efforts on your website. The integration of social media pages doesn't just allow your customers to stay in touch with you but also improves your overall brand image.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly also provides its users with a knowledge-based help center, which allows users to interact with other users and get to know about our platform in detail. Apart from relying on live chat support to resolve their queries, they can also take other users' help to improve their website performance. Your customers will give honest feedback on such online community centers rather than replying to you via email. When your users understand a specific platform, they will use it at their maximum potential to learn more about your business. Furthermore, providing social media customer service this way will also enable you to get all the answers you need from your customers.
Conclusion
Delivering social media customer service to your customers is widespread these days. You can use it to build stronger relationships with them and generate more loyal customers. Eventually, loyal customers are essential in growing your business in the long run.
Apart from providing live chat support, Strikingly also tries to educate its audience through blogs. We always help you resolve your queries and remove any technical-related problems while building your website.
Strikingly provides social media customer service to its highest. You can visit our Facebook and Twitter pages if you have any concerns. We understand the influence of social media in today's digital age and fully use it while keeping in touch with our users.
