Social media: Providing expert customer service

The first important step to expert customer service through social media is deciding who exactly will monitor and respond to enquiries. Online customer service requires a different approach than face to face or telephone – without the nuances, body language and tone from your customer, it can be more difficult to gauge how best to respond to a situation. Like all customer service, social media requires a friendly, personable touch – but you’ll also need consistency.

Commonly, businesses will opt for a dedicated social media customer service team, training within an existing customer service team, an automated chatbot, or an outsourced service. If you’re still choosing how best to approach your own social media, we’ll take a brief look at the pros and cons of each below.

To have a truly effective social media approach, you’ll need to decide on a tone of voice that suits you brand. On social media, many users appreciate a more human approach – social media often blends the line between professional and friendly in ways that online, email or telephone support doesn’t.

Especially if you’re trying to up your social media presence, you’ll want your customer service to be personable and approachable – yet consistent with your overall brand, and wider social media posting activity. Though customers on social media are often looking for a more realistic, person to person conversation, customer service always represents your brand as a whole.

That being said, it’s important to “read the room”. Many users love to see brands engaging in banter or adding emojis to their responses, as this demonstrates connection to a real person – not a corporation. However, a relaxed approach isn’t always the most suitable.

When communicating with your customers, you need to gauge their mood, communication style, and the importance of their request. For example, if you’re dealing with an angry customer, it’s best to respond politely, but with a serious tone. If someone’s simply enquiring about trivial topics like opening times, and they’re friendly and personable, it’s more fulfilling to respond in the same tone.

Across networks, there’s two main formats of social media customer enquiries – public posts, or private messages. The best course of action is usually to reply wherever your customer has initially reached out – if they approach your customer service team through a Tweet, make sure to Tweet them back, or if they message privately on Instagram, make sure to respond to their Direct Message.

However, it’s important to know when direct the conversation “offline” – be that from public posts to private messages, or from social media to another customer service channel better suited to the request.

For instance, many angry customers seek to publicly share their disappointment, and address businesses in public posts – sometimes, it’s necessary to respond in these cases with a request for more information via private messages, in order to avoid public escalation. On the other hand, you may want to respond publicly to demonstrate your business’ excellent customer service to the world.

Just as with other customer service channels, the process is all about reading your customer, and handling the situation in a way that benefits you both, with a satisfactory resolution.

With many customer interactions on social media available to view by the public, it’s important to make sure your advice and replies are consistent. It goes without saying that responding to every single enquiry is obligatory. It’s also imperative that every customer has access to the same level of support and can expect the same resolutions offered to others.

For example, if one customer raises an issue and is directed to call the support line, but a week later another customer with the same issue is assured their problem can be resolved at home - your resolutions won’t appear sincere or effective. Ensure all of your social media representatives are fully trained with the same information to achieve a more solid resolution structure. It’s a good idea to ensure regular briefing and handover sessions occur within your social media customer service teams, and ongoing cases are handled with care.

Many customers take to social media to avoid long call-queues, 3 working-day email response times or a trip to their local shop. It’s important to respond quickly on social media – it’s highly unlikely customers will be bringing complex issues to these platforms, just quick questions or status update requests.

Speed is so important on social media, some platforms even advertise your response times. On Facebook, many business pages display how long on average a business page takes to get back to messages, further evidencing the need for a quick response. It’s a good idea to clearly state when customer service representatives are monitoring your social media platforms, so users know when to expect a reply.

Making sure every customer is responded to can be a difficult task, especially for larger businesses. In order to reduce the number of enquiries social media customer service representatives face, keeping your customers in the loop can pre-emptively answer those burning questions.

If you’re experiencing issues, are launching new services, or have any activity likely to increase customer enquiries – beat them to the mark. Creating informative posts helps you reach a wider number of your effected customers instantly, posing a proactive approach to your customer service. Customers often admire transparency from businesses, especially if they’re forewarned about a potentially inconvenient change.