Social Media Customer Service: Why it’s Valuable & How to Do it Right

Creating engaging social media content is a big part of any brand’s social media strategy, but just posting to your social channels isn’t enough to keep users around! One of the best things about social media is the ability to create a dialogue with fellow users, and from a business perspective, current and potential customers.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that more and more consumers choose to use social as their primary method of communicating with brands. Users turn to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to send brand love, ask product/service questions, or seek customer service assistance.

Now more than ever, users expect to message a company on social channels for help and receive a fast response. The numbers don’t lie – 76% of people who message a business do so for customer service or support, and 83% of people expect said brands to respond to their question or complaint within 24 hours.

Making sure you have a customer service strategy in place is necessary for not only fielding consumer problems and complaints but creating a reputation for being a business known for being responsive and helpful.

Not sure where to get started on your customer service journey, or just need some tips on how to make your strategy stronger? Here are some of our recommendations.

Monitor conversations around your company 

Staying on top of your mentions and direct messages across every social platform is essential to make sure you are seeing consumer inquiries in near real-time. Depending on the volume of messages your company typically gets, you will want to set hourly, daily, and weekly monitoring schedules to ensure that you never miss a notification.

In addition to checking interactions occurring directly on your social profiles, you should also sweep platforms like Twitter and Instagram for general/hashtag mentions of your brand to see if there is any chatter about your business that needs attention. Depending on the volume of conversation your brand usually receives, this may only need to occur on a weekly, even monthly basis.

Create a response plan

Now that you’ve created a monitoring plan, you need to know what to do when you see comments or messages that need addressing! There are several things you’ll want to consider when designing response guardrails, including the tone of voice you will take and what types of complaints will need to escalate to senior management.

To keep track of the types of questions and comments your business receives, you can create a document that tracks each inquiry and what the brand response was. From there, you can start to use a variation of those responses if you receive similar messages in the future.

Minimize public conversations when necessary

If you receive a complaint or a question on your social pages that would be better to address in private, reply publicly by kindly asking them to send you a message. By doing so, you are showing other users that you have acknowledged the comment, and you’re also preventing a potential fire from breaking out on your page. Additionally, you’re protecting your customer’s privacy, as you may need confidential information from them, such as an order number, email address, or other account details.

However, not all comments need to go offline. Any general questions or comments can and should receive a response publicly, especially if that information may benefit other uses who are scrolling through your page!

Review inquiries and be proactive 

After a few weeks of responding to and tracking inquiries, you may start to notice a pattern in the type of complaints or questions your company is receiving. Figuring out where your customer dissatisfaction is coming from is an excellent insight into how you can improve your products or services moving forward!

These inquiries are also a useful resource for future content ideas. Your brand can take some frequently asked questions and create things like informational videos and Instagram/Facebook Stories to help your customers learn about how your products work. If you offer a service, you could also post any helpful information about what your company does and how you go about providing said services.

Ready to take your customer service game to the next level? Call, DM, or email us at sbellem@bbrookstone.com to get started. We would love to help you build strong customer relationships.