Tips for Better Social Customer Care Strategies
Social media platforms are like a public square–one that audiences have used to share praise, grievances, and everything in between for over two decades. While many brands have a well-defined marketing and advertising strategy, most brands do not have comprehensive customer service strategies, also known as social customer care strategies.
Why is Customer Service on Social Platforms Important?
Simply put, if you aren’t addressing customer concerns on the same platform they are airing their grievances, you aren’t addressing their concerns, and that is problematic. But it goes deeper than that. Having a social customer care strategy is your opportunity for a competitive advantage. The insights you gain from audience feedback can help you develop more effective strategies that elevate the most pivotal touchpoint in the customer experience.
According to a recent study, a whopping 63% of consumers have reported that their loyalty to a brand is significantly influenced by the quality of customer support that is provided by the brand on social media. And business leaders are starting to take notice of this.
The Challenges Brands Face that Cause Them to Come Up Short
Despite how important customer service on social platforms is to customers, brands are falling short. Only 8% of brands believe themselves to be leaders in customer service on social platforms. So why are brands coming up short on this important aspect of the customer journey?
The bottom line is that it’s not that companies don’t want to provide better customer service on social platforms, but rather that they don’t feel equipped to do so effectively. According to that same study, most marketers see three key issues that are leading to their shortcomings.
- There are too many messages. Over half of marketers say that the sheer influx of customer inquiries prevents them from handling requests in a timely manner.
- There is too much manual work. Nearly half of marketers report that the manual tasks take up a significant amount of time.
- There is too little context. Many marketers report gaps in available customer information for employees to reference when handling requests, preventing a more personalized and better customer experience.
How You Can Close the Gap in Social Customer Care
Overall, most marketers feel there are a lot of customer service requests; that there is a lot of manual work, perhaps due to a lack of cross-functional visibility; and that there is often not enough information in order to provide a high-quality experience. But there are some things you can implement to help close these gaps and improve the customer service experience on social platforms.
- Identify your gaps and redundancies. Start by identifying your brand’s pain points by mapping out your current social support strategy. What slows your team down? What limits the quality of support?
- Increase collaboration with other departments. It’s pivotal to align your social media efforts with your sales department, and if you have one, your customer care team. Collaboration can help fill gaps in knowledge and cut down on manual work due to a lack of cross-functional visibility.
- Implement a social listening strategy. Implementing and monitoring a social listening strategy can help you stay abreast of what your target audience is saying online. But even better, it can help create a more customer-centric service strategy, as the insights you gain can play a critical role in understanding customer sentiment.
- Leverage data to enhance the customer experience. Make sure you are using insights and data from across all your channels (website and various socials) to personalize social media interactions.
- Increase your investments in social media resources and tools. Most platforms offer free tools to schedule posts and look at insights. But having a tool that aggregates data from across your platforms and even integrates it into your company’s CRM capabilities can help increase collaboration between social and customer service teams.
Final Thoughts
You can no longer rely solely on your customer service function through your own brand’s website. Your customer care strategy has to include your social team as well. By identifying your own company’s pain points, you can begin to formulate how to remedy the challenges your brand faces when it comes to the most important part of the customer experience.
Need more assistance improving your customer service experience? Tintero Creative takes an innovative approach to improve your online presence. Connect with us today to learn more about how we can help you!