Social media plays a significant role in customer service. Whether a customer is raving about your new product, or raging about poor service, they’re most likely to do it on social media. And since social platforms have enormous reach and visibility, how you respond to customers’ queries and complaints can make all the difference. Quick and thoughtful responses can help you build trust and integrity with your customers and wider audiences on social media. So, don’t miss the opportunity to use social channels for customer support. They are not only great for marketing your offerings, but also serve as a direct platform to provide excellent, personalised, and round-the-clock service.
The number of social media users worldwide is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025. Social media consumption in Asia Pacific has grown dramatically with the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand ranking higher than the global average in social media usage. It is also estimated that there will be around 5.6 million social media users in Singapore by 2025, up from 5.05 million in 2020. These users value digital-first experiences — ease of access, speed, and connectedness. This presents a massive opportunity for businesses to serve their customers where they are in the shortest time possible.
Here are some broad ways you can benefit from offering customer service through social platforms:
Depending on the social media platforms you choose, you have the option to interact with customers in different ways. For instance, Twitter allows easy replies. WhatsApp supports both live chat and chatbots for faster case resolution at any time of the day. Facebook automatically shows a ‘very responsive’ badge on your company profile if you have a 90% or more response rate, and your usual response time is less than 5 minutes. Such features can help you efficiently solve customer issues (and get recognised for that).
Due to the high level of engagement on social media, servicing customers through these platforms is more complex than through traditional service channels like call centres and emails. To ace your social customer service game, you will need to recognise the differences in servicing through different social media platforms. From there, build the right strategies and tactics for each.
Determine which social media platforms your customers frequent most. Then, create a dedicated handle for social media customer support.
Conduct audits to find out the reasons customers contact your business. They may want to get information, resolve issues, or give feedback or praise. This can help you build a playbook and cadence to address customer cases efficiently.
Create a specific hashtag for your service team, so customers can easily search for past cases using them. Use keywords to allow language detection, so service agents can be alerted when they need to step in.
You can turn unhappy customers into brand advocates by handling negative comments the right way. Quickly acknowledge the negative comments or post and move the conversation to a personal chat where a service representative can resolve the customer’s issue directly.
Incentivise customers to review your products and services, and to tag others on their posts. This can help build a repository of helpful self-service content.
Help customers find answers on their own with product guide videos, explainer posts, etc.
Offering excellent social customer service across platforms requires a mix of intelligent workflows, proactive responses, and personalisation tactics. Salesforce combines the power of Service Cloud and Social Studio to deliver seamless customer service across social media platforms. With Service Cloud Social Networks, you can:
Learn how brands can serve today's customers where they are with unparalleled customer service.