Your business must be prepared to respond to prospects and customers on social media platforms. Here are some steps to get your social media customer service on track:1. Listen to your customers. At a minimum monitor the social media landscape for mentions of your company name brands products key executives and competitors. Make use of tools such as Google Alerts Socialmention and Hootsuite.
2. Train staff to respond to inquiries. Social media training is required so representatives have the appropriate skills to communicate on these channels and understand how to use the platforms and related internal systems.
3. Promote social media customer service to your organization and your customers. Let people know what you’re doing via your internal communications and owned media. Create social media content around the types of problems customers have.
4. Acknowledge and respond to inquiries as quickly as possible. To put it in perspective customers can get a representative on the phone immediately or receive an email in twenty-four hours. Ignoring consumer requests on social media platforms doesn’t make them go away rather it’s more likely to get customers upset on a platform where they can easily let lots of other people know about it.
5. Follow up where appropriate. Remember that responding is just the first step. It’s important to resolve any issues to make your customers happy and hopefully encourage them to buy from you again.
6. Track your effectiveness. As with any initiative it’s critical to set up metrics to assess your progress. Set goals for your social media customer service representatives.
The bottom line is that customers will try to contact your firm wherever there’s a communication channel including social media. They want to know that you’re listening to them and trying to fix their problems.