Improving Customer Service Through Social Media
While every business wants to promote great customer experience, but there are instances when things go wrong. Due to advancements in information technology, today’s customers are well-informed and aware of the level of service that they can expect from service providers. Research reveals that 62 percent of global customers stopped doing business with a company after they felt dissatisfied with the company’s service quality. You will be surprised to note that by 2020, customers will interact with companies without having any human interaction with them. This translates to the fact that customers will increasingly look for faster, efficient service in digital form in times to come. With social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, being a vital part of digital campaigns, you, as a business owner, may want to make sure that you use them well not only as platforms to promote sales, but also as media to improve your customer service.
If you are looking to capitalize on the ongoing social media revolution, you may use these simple strategies to make the most out of your social media presence:
- Express Thankfulness: Demonstrate gratitude through appropriate gestures. Make your customers feel loved and cared for by engaging them in creative ways. Whenever a customer appreciates your service, thank him/ her by sending a coupon to his/her email and upload his/her photo along with the testimonial that he provides. Alternatively, you can conduct a short interview with him/her and have it published on your social media page.
- Seek Feedback: Seeking customers’ feedback and utilizing it meaningfully is a crucial step to ensure the enhancement of your customer service standard. When your customers let you know about any issue, you should request them to suggest how you can improve your service further. You can create polls on different topics to solicit feedbacks from your clients. Let your customers know the poll outcomes and how you will implement their suggestions.
- Allocate A Separate Account Solely For Customer Service: While this is an option which large businesses can implement in a larger scale, however, smaller businesses too can implement it to a certain extent. You can create a separate social media page to offer live customer support at specific times of the day. Xbox has created a separate Twitter account to address its customers’ questions and complaints Monday to Sunday between 6:00 am and 12:00 am.
- Respond To Queries Faster: A timely response is better than an accurate response. Research reveals that 43 percent of consumers view rapid response to queries as the most important constituent of a company’s social media initiatives. With another research suggesting that 72 percent of consumers will expect a response within an hour, you may want to make sure that your employees take enough care to address your customers’ queries in a timely manner.
As companies continue to look for innovative ways to provide customer support, you should create appropriate means to understand what your customers expect from you.