Social media customer service is the latest resource that enterprise leaders are implementing to uplift their organizations. Enterprises are leveraging social media in a way that builds brand awareness, promotes sales, and improves community relations.
Exceptional customer service promotes growth and provides businesses with coveted firsthand, word-of-mouth referrals, which remain unsurpassed as the best way to elevate brand credibility. Using popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, savvy business leaders are magnifying the value of their brands.
Today, consumers post their opinions – good or bad – on a digital global stage, making it more critical than ever for business leaders to ensure that they are effectively managing their online presence and engaging with their consumer base. Therefore, having a solid social presence is vital for getting clicks, views, and high conversion rates.
Simply being active on social media, however, isn’t always enough. Social media customer service is one notable growing trend. It is the practice of providing consumer support through social media channels to quickly answer questions from customers. Allowing a comment to go unanswered or taking too long to reply to a mention are among the biggest mistakes made by online players.
Strong social media customer service leads to better revenue
Good social media customer service doesn’t just help you connect with consumers. It also leads to more revenue. In terms of profitability and relationship growth, companies that fully engage with customers on social media see an average 23% boost in growth. Actively disengaging with customers has been shown to result in a 13% decrease.
Because businesses make their social media profiles public, these channels make it easy to attract and introduce potential new consumers to your products or services. If other users see you interacting positively with people they follow, it gives you one more way to increase your conversion rates.
Word of mouth marketing is a powerful tool, especially since 71% of customers who have a positive social media customer service experience are more likely to refer that company to others. 71% of customers who experience positive social media customer service are likely to recommend that company to others.
Connecting with consumers helps back up brand promises
Consumers who are familiar and aligned with a brand, on average, contribute 47% of wallet share compared to those who don’t feel a personal connection with a brand. Social media makes it easier than ever to showcase your brand ideals to customers and form a personal connection with followers. Actively engaging in good social customer service lets people know that you’re able to back up your promises.
Direct Access to Target Market
Social media cuts out the middleman and gives companies and organizations direct access to their target markets, enabling firms to see what consumers want, what changes they’d like to see, and what enterprises can do to improve their performance. This is especially true for improving performance within marketing efforts. Thanks to social media, audiences are calling out companies and organizations that are making missteps regarding social and political values. Take diversity, for example, where up to 83% of audiences have found marketing campaigns most successful when they better represent our diverse modern society. Studies show that 49-per cent of consumers will purchase after receiving a prompt response to queries via social media.
Transparency and social media go hand in hand
Social media provides enterprises with a fast, simple, and transparent channel for communicating with consumers. Any consumer with an Internet connection can see and watch your customer service activities via social media. This means that companies and organizations have the opportunity to showcase that they are top-notch enterprise that cares about and listens to their customers. If companies fail to respond to media mentions, it’s going to be obvious to everyone using those social channels.
Rapid Customer Service
Customer service representatives should be there to help, not to hide. Enterprises with poor customer service spend valuable resources attempting to repair brand credibility and image, and too many customer service platforms are difficult to use and can seem to take forever. Not only do you make the customer come to you, but you also waste a good deal of their time. By meeting consumers where they spend a lot of their time – on social media – you can greatly improve the quality of your customer service. Even though rapid customer service response is the new status quo, only 12 percent of today’s enterprises respond to social media customer service inquiries – at all. Firms have a lot of work to do before meeting this new expectation, presenting an opportunity for enterprise leaders that bring their organizations up to par. In the end, impeccable customer service improves enterprise profits.
How to provide great customer service on social media
While every social platform is different, there are a few things that you can do on any platform to enhance your customer service reputation:
Respond promptly to comments and messages
Reply to all feedback, questions, and comments
Personalize interactions by using each customer’s name (If multiple people help manage your account, personalize conversations by ending interactions with the signature or initials of whoever wrote the response.)
Create specific templates or guidelines for different types of responses, such as negative reviews
Don’t wait for people to tag you (If you have the time, search your company’s specific name. It shows consumers you’re actively engaged and that you want to help them.)
Consider creating a hashtag to encourage more interactions (This isn’t always necessary, but it can be a fun way to get customers involved.
Conclusion
Consumers who receive prompt responses through social media channels are more likely to remain brand loyal and provide word-of-mouth referrals. When implemented correctly, social media customer service encourages consumer spending, improves operational efficiency, and increases organizational performance.
While forward-thinking executives use social media to optimize service efficiency, they also use the resulting data to gain valuable insights into consumer-enterprise engagement. Big data analysis helps enterprises form strategies for meeting corporate objectives.
