82% of people use some kind of social media, and 64% of people would rather send a message to a business on social media instead of calling them. But how can you make sure your business is setting itself up for success, and can provide excellent customer service via social media? Here are a few of our top tips.

1. Be As Responsive As Possible 

If you’re willing to provide customer support via social media, it must not be an afterthought. It must be a fully integrated part of your overall customer service strategy. That means that you should hire dedicated staff who specialize in social media customer support.

You should also develop templates for answering common questions and concerns to save time and make an effort to respond to all of your customers as quickly as possible. When it comes to social media support, faster is always better. 

Related Post: ROI Benefits of Outsourcing Lead Generation

2. Focus On The Social Media Channels Your Customers Use

You should focus your customer service team’s efforts on the social media channels that your customers actually use. For example, if your business’s Facebook page has 50,000 “likes” and your Twitter account has 250 followers, it doesn’t make sense to have a team ready to respond to Twitter messages at all times. 

That doesn’t mean that you should ignore messages on lesser-used social media platforms. Checking them regularly is still a good idea, but your goal with social media customers is to maximize your reach – and the way you do that is by providing support on the platforms that your customers are already using.

3. Create And Implement Social Media Guidelines

Just like phone or live chat support, you should have guidelines for how your team responds to customers on social media. This could include things like tone of voice, how quickly they're expected to respond to direct messages (DMs) and public comments, how they answer questions, and when to escalate support issues to managers or supervisors. Creating social media guidelines helps create a consistent experience for customers, and makes it easier for your team to provide the support they need.

4. Consider Implementing Dedicated Support Pages 

If you run a larger business, you may want to consider setting up a separate support page exclusively for customer service requests. This way, you can separate customer comments and questions from your main social media feed. 

This reduces the number of support requests your main social media pages will get. You can also do things like add FAQs and other resources to your support page, which may help customers resolve their issues more quickly.

5. Think About Incorporating Chatbots 

Most small-to-midsize businesses don’t offer 24/7 social media support. But if you want to make it easier for customers to get after-hours or weekend support, you may want to consider incorporating chatbots into your social media presence. Chatbots can easily be incorporated into major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Chatbots can also act as a “first line of defense” when customers contact you on social media with questions. With the right workflow, you can set up chatbots to answer lots of common customer questions, provide access to FAQs, and more. And if your customers can’t get the help they need, you can set your chatbot up to connect them with a human customer service representative.

Related Post: Why It’s Important to Offer 24/7 Customer Support

Follow These Steps To Provide Better Customer Service On Social Media!

Providing an excellent customer experience is crucial if you want to keep your business growing. And as social media use continues to explode, social media customer support is becoming a bigger and bigger part of this. 

Need help with customer service via social media? Incept is here to help. Contact us today to set up a meeting, get more details from our team, and see how our services can help you keep your customers satisfied.