[Part 2] CUSTOMER SERVICE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

If you missed the first part of this post, here it is: [Part 1] Customer Service Through Social Media.

Let's continue, then, with the second part of the..

Introductory Guide to Social Media Customer Service

3. Set limits that indicate when you will and won't respond.

Figure out what you should say when you respond.

In many cases, customers turn to social media to ask a question or complain about something in particular. However, many times the comments come from “trolls” or unknown users trying to drag your brand into a topic of mass interest on social media (this is very common on Twitter).

Make sure your team knows how to respond to negative posts and messages; the most important thing is not to respond to insults.

If you receive a message and think you can help the customer, keep reading. But if you suspect a user is a troll because of their provocative comments about culture, politics and other issues unrelated to your brand, product or service, it's best to stay out of it.

Develop best practices for responses.

When you decide that you do need to respond to customer inquiries on social media, it's helpful to create some best practices to help solve problems easily and efficiently and in a way that fosters positive brand sentiment among your customers.

After all, you're not only trying to solve your customers' problems, but also trying to delight them and encourage them to recommend your brand (and its first-class support) to their friends and family.

Be positive.

Keep a friendly, positive tone when responding to inquiries on social media. Unless it's clear that it's a joke or teasing, avoid sarcasm or humor (at least until the problem has been solved). However, that doesn't mean you can't show your brand's personality when interacting with customers on social media; once the problem has been resolved, you can use emojis or GIFs to show your personality and connect with users in a more human and fun way.

Be transparent.

Some of the problems customers post on social media will be easy to solve, but others won't. You're not obligated to solve every problem a customer may have with your first response, but you do have a responsibility to be transparent with them about the time frame you'll need to offer a solution.

The important thing is to be honest; customers will value your honesty and will be spared the hassle of having to keep asking whether you've solved their problem yet.

Take conversations off social media.

Ask customers to send you a direct message or email if they need to share personal information with you so you can help them, or if the conversation is getting tense.

That way, you'll minimize the external visibility of that conversation and may be able to solve the problem faster than if you wait for the customer to message you again.

4. How to Measure and Analyze This Effort

It's important to monitor how many conversations you have, what the topics are and, if possible, what the overall tone of all of them is. Prepare the results of the qualitative feedback by keeping a record of frequent comments and ratings (both positive and negative).

You should also try to quantify your social media customer service efforts as much as you can. You could send customer satisfaction surveys to users by email, in which they answer whether they are satisfied with the service they received on social media.

In addition, you could gather data to recommend adding more resources to offer even better support to customers on the networks they use most.

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