8 Social Media Strategies To Improve Customer Service

What is your customer service presence in social media? Yes you read it right.  Social media is more than a way for people to seek out new services or products.  People use social media to make complaints, share their experiences, make buying decisions, or stay connected.  Bygone are the days when a business only had to worry about receiving a call wanting a refund because of bad service.  Today, you face the same challenges as every business does.  Conversations went from one-on-one to one-on-many with social media.  When businesses treat customers well, customers are more likely to talk up the business; however, treat them poorly and say hello to a social media disaster.  Want customers to talk you up? Here is what you can do:

1. Define your brand’s standard for customer service, and have every employee adhere to those standards.  How do you want your phones to be answered?  How about inquires about your business? How are you going to receive new as well as existing shoppers? What is your complaint strategy?  For when it comes to social media, professionalism rules.  Every touch point a customer has with your business needs to carry equal weight.
2. Employees need to think and act as if they are owners.  You need to provide new as well as current employees with guidelines on how to handle both one-on-one interactions as well as one-on-many.  Remember, your employees are extensions of your brand.
3. Know which social media sites your customers use, and establish a presence there.  Be part of the conversation instead of being the conversation.
4. Listen to your customers, and hear what they are writing or videoing.  Social media is an open diary, and how you react further defines your brand.  Keep in mind, social media communication threads can be read by prospective customers along with everyone that follows that person who initiated the thread or video post.
5. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.  While your employees, along with you, may not necessarily agree with a customer’s social criticism, your customer’s perspective is what matters.  Remember when you had that bad experience and lost your cool?  Well that is what is happening when your customers post social criticism.  Reach out, and tell them what you can do to fix the issue.
6. Respond to all social comments whether it is a question, complaint, or complement. Thank them, and take ownership.  This messages your brand’s customer service worth.
7. Do what you state you'd do.  In other words, resolve customer issues timely; and be sure it’s what the customer agreed upon.  Nothing worse than giving away free services or products to have an issue escalate further when all the customer wanted was an apology. 
8. Value your brand and follow up.  Remind every employee that shoppers do share their experiences about your brand on social media.  Make sure that the customer is satisfied with how a situation was remedied.  If s/he is still not satisfied, after remedy, ask how s/he would like for you to bring about satisfaction.  Even though shoppers that write criticism about your brand are under no obligation to change their writing if resolved, the likelihood that they will tell their friends why they’re still unsatisfied is a given.