Using Social Media to Improve Customer Service

Social media will undoubtedly continue to create new ‘help desk’ tools for businesses and customers, but some already provide such tools. By going to your Customer Support page on Twitter, you can make an icon on your page showing people that support is available by simply enabling customer support.

Be Accessible for Customer Service

Checking your social media page every other day simply is inadequate to provide great customer service. The truth is, 40 percent of consumers believe they should receive a reply within the hour. Whether this requires checking your pages periodically throughout the day or hiring a social media manager to handle it, the task is something that must be done.

Use Already-Existing Customer Service Tools

While social media sites will definitely provide more ‘help desk’ type tools in the future, the big two already have an option. On the Twitter Customer Support settings page, you can enable customer support and followers will discover a button on the page saying support is available.

The awesome thing about this is that even those who never follow you on Twitter can then send direct messages. Similarly, make sure your Facebook business page is set up to take incoming messages. You can also add a contact button straight to the page via the ‘Add a Button’ option.

Be Very careful with Automation

Via their actual site or third-party apps, Facebook and Twitter both have options for robotic responses. While these might not hurt in all cases, especially if it is just a ‘we will be right with you’ message, the wrong automation can send the wrong message. And if you do use automated responses, be sure you check in frequently. When it comes down to it, messages sound better coming from individuals who actually consider the issue at hand.

Consumers are engaging with brands via social media more than ever. Sad to say, if they see terrible customer service on your page, they may never even try your products or services. Take the time to do social media customer service correctly, and it will inevitably pay dividends.

Image by:  Yoel Ben-Avraham