The most important part of providing outstanding customer service means being there for your customers in times of great crisis. When tragedy strikes, it’s imperative to be at the ready for your customers and their communities with a helping hand.

Here’s a look at just a few things your customer service team can do to go above-and-beyond when crisis moments occur.

1. Share resources

Use social networks to curate resource lists and share them with your audience.  Have your support team brainstorm which resources may be the most helpful for your audience and organize them in one place for your customers to keep tabs on it.  As an example, Salesforce Marketing Cloud curates list of helpful resources in local areas when crisis situations arise. 

2. Make donation information easily available and shareable

Take the example of United Airlines. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the airline created a donation page where people could easily donate to the relief efforts.  Leveraging their brand’s assets to encourage donations, they offered incentives in the form of miles/points to those contributing larger amounts.  As well, they embedded social share buttons so contributors could easily pass the word along and encourage more donation.

3. Target affected areas

Networks like Facebook allow you to tailor your updates to certain geographic locations.  Update your account with important resources and information targeted only at affected areas.  This allows those in the area to comment and converse with each other without others in unaffected areas chiming in with unhelpful, if well-intentioned, thoughts while also helping to keep spam commenters to a minimum.  Facebook, more than other networks, is still where people connect to those they know in person, meaning it’s likely to be the first site they turn to see what other locals are sharing and discussing.  Be there to help in any way that you can.

4. Just be available

Simply being available and making it known your support team is manning the fort is crucial.  Don’t worry about over sharing or over tweeting in times of need.  Your audience will forgive you if you update more frequently during crisis moments, so don’t hold back.  Your brand likely has plenty of resources at its disposal, who knows which ways you can be helpful.  In a time of crisis, it’s impossible to predict all of the ways you could be of service.  So be there, and listen.