How to help customers while they drink coffee

Social media is a very popular place, and today more and more customers get an idea “Hmm, I’ve got a question about this product. Let me aks them on Facebook!”. (Facebook ads play their role in spreading this pattern.)
While on social media, customers are quite vocal. When they don’t like something, they’ll make you know, be sure of it. So monitoring comments not only gives you insight into your weaknesses, but allows you to turn this situation to your benefit. Reply to your dissatisfied clients with an offer or solution, and everybody else will see that you really care. Add a bit of personal touch to establish emotional connection, and people will appreciate it.
Another beneficial aspect is that clients are more likely to share their positive experience with your service while they’re at it. So helping them via Facebook messaging is more likely to induce word-of-mouth promotion than doing email support.

They only thing that can stop you from doing full-time customer support is technological complexity of your product. If you sell sophisticated software, you might find social networks a poor channel to connect with your customers. At the same time, they will likely be using other channels themselves, proving this statement. Still, you can receive some generic questions (about your pricing, special promotions, collaboration, etc) which need to be answered. This is not customer support but a customer service, and is still important.
What you should also think about is working on your brand image. You might never actually use social networks to support your users, but you still should consider your opportunities for creating a good-looking public page that tells a story about your company. This works for your reputation in general.
Playing on their turf
If you decide to go social, consider your capability to handle all the requests in a timely manner. Users expect fast reply while chatting with anyone, and they usually do not make exception for brands. Moreover, they are more likely to recommend a brand that provides a quick+ineffective response than a brand that gives a slow+effective solution. Of course going for useless replies is not your plan, but feeling the sense of urgency is key here.
Tip: in case of of mass issues or outages do not waste your time to reply to each and every message. Publish one major post warning your customers about the issue, and provide estimated resolution time.

Another trick that can help you stand out is personalised support reps accounts. Show their faces in your profile. Tell a story. Create special accounts for each representative, so they can work under your company and leave comments as individuals. This will evoke a connection, because people love contacting other people, not faceless brands.
Next opportunity to win customers love is to create a separate account dedicated to support solely. Of course it requires prompt moderation and fast response from your support department, but it also shows how seriously you take this task.
When you launch a new product, you can successfully use social channels to share educational content like instruction and how-to videos to help all new customers before they reach out for advice.

Scoring the goal
Providing support over social media has definite financial benefits:
- Your reputation improves. Online communities have a huge impact on purchasing decisions. More people tend to choose you over other options if they know you’re cool, and if they can see your brand advocates.
- Your revenue grows. Social buzz works as free marketing tool.
- Your customers become loyal. Positive experience will convince your clients to stay by your side, and to try your new products once they come out.

You might find it necessary to elect or hire a dedicated team member responsible for all social network interactions. This person will help you create your own guidelines to managing social interactions with customers:
- Tone of voice and overall mood
- Reply time
- Most active hours
- Premade answers to most common questions
- Actions bound to calm down angry customers
- Issue escalation practices
On top of that, this team member can organize proper social media monitoring. It’s important to watch conversations relevant to your business, and join them when you can add something valuable. Be careful though, as sometimes people want to be able to talk about companies without them listening. Even more, some might consider social listening to be an invasion of their privacy.

What is the best way to organize your social networking efforts? You can always do it directly, or turn to software that gathers all of your customer service channels together.
Tip: google “social media monitoring tools” to find helpful automation solutions.
Originally published at dreamsupport.io
