Delivering Great Customer Service Using Social Media

A lot of brands use social media as their main tool for customer service, and so do we. We gathered a few workflows and tips that we use to do that.

Customer service is not a one person’s job

Customer service relates to anyone in the team and it’s a big part of the company’s culture.

Therefore, we share every relevant feedback we get with all the team using Slack (we have a General channel and Social Media channel to discuss about specific cases) to increase awareness to what happens on social media, and to point out interesting ideas and issues.

Because it’s important for us to deliver great experience to all of our users, our Technical/Product team gets involved with any issue that requires technical support or a bug fix. If possible, we usually try to release a new version with a fix within a few minutes.

Everything is connected

Social media is a great way to speak with anyone who interacts with our product, answer questions and listen to feedback. However, social media is only one channel — out of many — that we use to speak with people about our product.

We make sure all the Social Media team uses tools such as Intercom and Mixpanel, because it helps to get a better understanding of the people they’re talking to, what were their interactions with the product and see past conversations.

Monitoring: Pull & Push

To deliver great customer service on social media, we make sure not only to reply to mentions and comments, but also to look for discussions about our product. Some people can misspell your product’s name, write a feedback without mentioning you, and so on.

We use Tweetdeck (you can also use Mention) to monitor every tweet that contains our domain name, product name and different (wrong) variations of our product’s name. It helps us to find new discussions, and deliver better customer service as fast as possible.

Reply fast

In general, response rate is super important for good customer service, and even more important on social media.

Giving fast feedback on what’s happening is critical. It’s better to reply with “we’re checking this issue” rather than not replying at all, and it’s important to be available to urgent cases during the weekends and holidays. You should be available whenever and wherever your customers need you.

Be personal

The best thing about social media is that you talk with real people, not bots. No one likes to feel like they’re talking with bots.

Write your personal name in the end of a tweet, use informal language, emojis and funny GIFs, are only a few of the things you should do to make your interaction more personal, more human.

Do you have more insights or ideas? Let me know: Yuval Shoshan / yuval@startafire.com.