Customer service doesn’t end with phone calls and emails, if you haven’t given much attention to your business’ social media. Now is the time to change that. Customer Service is an ever-changing beast, and the way you handle it online can help shape your company’s reputation.

There are several sure-fire ways to blow your competition out of the water in the Social Media space. With a little creative guidance and a sure-fire tactic, you simply can’t go wrong!

How Important is Customer Service Online?

The short of it is, very.

Of course, you will always need to deliver excellent customer service through the usual channels. So, whether for you that is, phone calls, emails, letters etc. They’re still as important as always. But customer service no longer ends there.

People now have the freedom to access Social Media platforms and call out where they feel a company has gone wrong.

If you aren’t up to scratch, you may see keyboard warriors ravage your company publicly for everyone to see.

But it isn’t just about that, customer service also means being visible and transparent online.

This is a prime opportunity to showcase what type of company you are. How are your ethical practices? Are you a fun and friendly office or are you professional?

Here is the perfect place to align with who your customers are. Millennials for example are more likely to purchase from a company that show eco responsibility. Gen Z-ers, will look for companies that understand ‘them’ and reflect their values.

When done right, your brand can create its own ‘community’. We will divulge some great examples of these later in this post.

It’s also great to see how your competition is doing in this space.

You can _watch how they interact and what they put out onto their platforms.

What Should you be Doing?

Every business will demand different social media channels to excel in their customer service.

But ones to consider for your business are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Pintrest
• TikTok – yep even TikTok!

It’s up to you to decide which is the most relevant for your business. Quite often it makes sense to be on all of them, to capture a wider audience.

However, be mindful that the same content will not be applicable across every platform, you will have to vary between each one to reach full potential.

How to know which platform you need for your customers.

Facebook

• Women are slightly more likely to use than men
• 18-year olds – all the way to the over 65’s are on Facebook, it’s a great platform to reach the masses

Instagram

• Woman are slightly more likely to use than men
• Largest age group using this platform is 18-29-year olds

Pintrest

• Much higher use in women than men (almost double)
• Most users are likely to live in Suburban areas

Twitter

• Equal use between men and women
• This platform is used more by highly educated people

LinkedIn

• Most popular with graduates and high-income earners
• More likely to live in cities
• Slightly more men use than women

TikTok

• Mostly used by 16-24-year olds
• Estimated to have the most users in China

The reach of all these platforms can be exponential and have uncapped potential for growth.

You can grow both organically and via paid advertising. It is great to be able to grow your audience organically, without investing any money.

1. Start by following businesses you like or similar pages/people
2. Post relevant content, but be sure to mix it up, don’t post the same things over and over.

• Infographics
• Photos (you own)
• Quotes
• Shared content
• News

3. Engage with your following and followers, like, comment and share. This improves your performance within the algorithms
4. Post to stories on Instagram and Facebook

Paid advertising or ‘PPC’ is a great way to get your business in front of the right eyeballs. By selecting a few key criteria. Facebook or Instagram will ensure your ad is seen by say; males, 20-35-year-old, lives in a metropolitan area.

The best thing about this is you have total control as to how much you pay. You could pay as little as £1 a day. Of course, the reach will decline the smaller the amount.

All these elements contribute to your customer service. If you are accessible and portray an excellent business aesthetic. You are shaping your reputation amongst your audience.

Dedicated Customer Support Pages

Now we have covered how your business is viewed, and creating that sense of online community, we can investigate the nitty-gritty of customer service on Social Media.

Having a page specifically designed for customer support can be a brilliant initiative. As it directs negative feedback away from your main page (which is there to sell your organisation and what you stand for).

Not only that, but it shows true dedication to the satisfaction of your customers. It’s a safe place for your customers to air any grievances and gain assistance from you.

What you cannot do, is let complaints sit unanswered for days, speed matters.

Make sure you have the capacity to answer any issues in a timely and helpful manner. Even if the complaint cannot be resolved right there and then, it is worth responding quickly to advise someone has seen the issue and will help as soon as they can.

You can also have a lot of fun in these forums. Match your customers tone, but there are some excellent examples where companies haven’t taken themselves too seriously and had a bit of a laugh and a joke with their customers.

Here’s some hilarious examples;

Smartcar

Sainsburys

Samsung

Social Media Marketing Plan

Before you get started it’s beneficial to have a plan in place. This can guide you through the year to check back and see if you are on track.

So, which social media platforms do you want to set up, if you haven’t already?

Which platforms are your competitors on?

What content do you want to put out there?

What are others in a similar space doing?

If someone is killing it on social media, it makes sense to use them as a starting to point to base your social media plan off.

You don’t need to break the mould – use it! But by no means copy.

Where is your growth? In what category or audience?

Set yourself online customer service KPI’s –

• Have a time to respond
• How many you respond to
• Number of resolved cases
• Percentage of customers to leave a positive review
• How many followers you wish to gain
• How many likes you want to organically receive

There’s plenty more to consider, this is purely a place for you to start.

Devle Deeper into Engagement

Social media can be utilised in so many ways to connect with your customers and provide excellent customer service.

Stories –

Are a great way to engage with your audience. A lot of people look at stories almost exclusively, so if you aren’t posting to stories you’re missing out on a big opportunity.

You can ask questions, carry out polls, boomerangs, countdowns and recommendations. There’s a whole variety of excellent tools. Use them!

Messenger –

This has grown in popularity too in recent years. You can set your page up to automatically open the messenger tab when customers access your page. To this you can add a nice greeting that encourages the viewer to send you a direct message.

Social scheduler –

Now this doesn’t directly enable better engagement, what you’re putting out is pretty much the same.

However, by using a great social scheduler such as Hootsuite or Later. Will free up a lot of time, by streamlining all of your apps through one scheduler will make your life a lot easier and enable you to spend more time responding and connecting with your audience.

Be careful – it isn’t a one size fits all, carefully consider what you are posting where.

Get your staff involved –

People connect with people not businesses. Your people are your selling point. Boost morale and encourage your staff to get on social media!

Show what your staff get up to daily or get them to do Instagram take-overs. Capture the funny office moments and team lunches. People enjoy seeing this on social media! It all counts towards your customer service.

Use creative websites –

If you’re worried that you aren’t exactly an adobe wizz. Fear not.

There are some excellent websites there to help you create captivating posts at a few clicks of a mouse. Check out Canva.com. You can use many of their features without paying. They have pre-set posts that can be easily amended to suit your colours or branding.

So, anyone can have click-bait worthy images to pull in your customers!

Some Great Examples of Customer Service

Nike is a great example of top-notch customer service on social media. They reply in a timely manner and they have a dedicated support page.

Skyscanner – this is a brilliant example of not taking yourself too seriously, their response to this image a customer had posted which displays 413786 hours and 25 minutes lay over. Obviously caused by a glitch in the system. Their response is nothing short of brilliant.

Spotify advertises straight away where you need to go for customer support. On their supporting page, you can clearly see the level of care they provide their customers. It’s this brilliant level of customer service that has helped their brand grow to dominate the market.

Overall, you can browse these sites and gather some fabulous ideas of how best to present your business online and how to deliver exceptional customer service.

So, What are the 9 Steps?

We have gone on now for over 1700 words. And we promised you a clear cut 9 steps to excellent social media customer service. So, here it is in a nutshell! –

1. Open relevant Social Media pages
2. Utilise PPC advertising on social media to reach more customers
3. Open a direct support page
4. Create a strong plan, to help you deliver excellent considered service
5. Show transparency through your social media to connect your customers
6. Mimic your customers tone
7. Act quickly – and take offline when relevant
8. Have a little fun with it
9. Don’t break the mould – use it!

It is quite overwhelming how much can be done online. It’s good practice to simply start with one platform, master that and move on.

You don’t need to dive in headfirst and absolutely baffle yourself silly! Social media is fun – that’s why so many of the population is on it!

Just remember that authenticity and your people will sell your business better than anything and a quick responding, genuine customer service will keep you there.

We’re intrigued to know how your social media customer service and online presence is going?

Let us know in the comments!

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