Some of the world’s most renowned brands like Dell, American Airlines, Nike, Vodafone and Safaricom have social media customer service to thank for their success. With the fast advancing technology, customer care is quickly transforming from traditionally being an entirely on-site service to an online social serivice as well. Social customer service has many advantages yet it’s a totally under utilised space for businesses all over the world.
Most brands give little attention to social care much to their demise, not knowing the great power that social customer service bears when it comes to brand marketing. In order to serve a greater client base and attract more customers in the first place, providing day to day customer service via social media sites is indispensable. Accent Marketing recently surveyed over 1,000 customers to look at how consumers seek information from brands they follow across social channels.
It also looked at which channels are believed to be the best for communicating with a brand, and the looks at the power of the online customer service.
Image: Accent
What to do with Customer Feedback
One of the greatest upsides of social customer service is that it provides that best channel to receive customer feedback. Perhaps the reason why you are not getting more successful leads or your sales are still nothing to write home about is because your brand isn’t really meeting the needs of your target clients.
The worst part is you may have no idea that you are not satisfactorily meeting the needs of your customers. Social care enables a business to bridge the communication gap between the management and their customers by availing the opportunity for customers to provide feedback.
By commenting, liking and sharing posts on social networking sites; it becomes easier to know what customers expect or think of your brand. Their comments or responses will also help you understand their problems and concerns. In concise form, social care will go a long way in ensuring that you know exactly what your customers want.
With such information, you can then tailor your services or products to meet their core needs heightening your chances of business success.
What about bad feedback? Handling PR Crisis
While running a business, it is quite normal to occasionally encounter what can be best termed as ‘Public Relations Disaster’. These are usually situations which if not handled quickly and properly can easily ruin your public image. Since social media sites provide ample room for engaging with your fans (audience), social care comes handy in solving such problems.
Through social customer service you will be able to listen and reassure your customers accordingly by providing quick same day responses to their complaints. Over time, considering the fact that most customers share their experiences with their friends and generally the rest of the world on social media, how well you address their issues can enable you erase any previous negative image.
Remember not everyone is going to be happy 100% of the time. If you handle negative feedback appropriately more often than not, this negative customer feedback can be flipped on it’s head and be turned into a raving review!
Milk it recommendation is for brands to follow a 5 step process to Social Customer Service
- Have a dedicated highly trained team to support channels beyond phone and email to ensure engagement through live chat and social media
- Ensure seamless customer interaction making sure that the engagement specialists can follow the conversation across social channels
- Always suggest an offline forum to resolve the issue. Be responsive, not reactive.
- Define a strategy based on how your consumers are using each channel
- Go beyond traditional phone engagement ensuring that consumers can reach trained specialists through each channel
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