Social media is essential to attract new customers, to make sure your business is being talked about, to spread brand awareness and it’s also a vital SEO signal that Google uses to help it decide how relevant your website is.
Bearing all of this in mind then, there are already plenty of compelling reasons why your business should be investing in social media, and here is another. Using social media is an excellent tool that you can use to help increase customer satisfaction.
This article looks at the benefits of providing customer service via social media also gives you some handy tips that will help you to do it well.
Customers ready to buy from you will often have a simple, final question they need answering before diving in and making their purchasing decision. They might, for example, require the reassurance of knowing they can return an item if it is not right, or the customer might have a technical question about comparability, or they might want to know about your delivery options.
Sure, most of this information will be or certainly should be available on your website, but for a lot of people who are connected to social media 24/7 via their smartphone, asking a quick question on either Twitter or Facebook is often a lot more convenient for them. Providing quick answers to your customer is critical. This component can determine if they choose to complete a purchase with you, or turn to a competitor instead.
Force people to go and hunt this information down for themselves and you could very quickly lose a potential sale so don’t believe anything you read that tells you social media doesn’t have a direct effect on sales. Even though it can sometimes be hard to measure, social media really can and does have a direct influence on sales.
Reasons to Use Social Media for Provide Customer Service
- Your business is being helpful which aids positive brand perception and drives trust in your brand
- Customers expect to be able to connect with companies 24/7
- Problems can be resolved quickly and effectively as they arise minimising any inconvenience to your customers
- Real-time responses can have a direct influence on sales
- Reputation management is facilitated and helps to reduce negative sentiment
How to use Social Media to Provide Great Customer Service
The most important thing to do is to frequently monitor your social networks for brand mentions, questions and comments. This doesn’t mean checking your Facebook wall once a day or your Twitter account every few days. You will need to be actively monitoring all of your channels multiple times throughout the day, every day.
When dealing with any complaints or questions posted on social media, make sure you remain professional and courteous at all times. It’s okay to be a little less formal but keep in your mind that these are customers or potential customers you are dealing with and their perception of you needs to remain positive so show empathy and understanding.
Always offer a solution to customers, especially if they are complaining rather than asking a simple question. With regards to complaints, don’t encourage customers to post full details of their claim on your Facebook wall or Twitter, instead, quickly provide them with a direct email address or ask for their phone number so you can deal with their issue privately.
Once dealt with, you are likely to find that the same customer will return to social media to post a thank you. This shows other followers that you are committed to solving problems, which will make them trust you more and will improve their perception of your brand.
Deal with all customer questions or problems quickly and effectively, and that customer will have a positive experience, making them more likely to use you again or spread positive rather than negative word of mouth.
Summary
Don’t be scared of customers contacting you to resolve service-related issues on social networks. They will naturally contact you in the way that is most convenient to them; so closing a channel down and refusing to deal with customer service issues will only result in adding to the negative perception of dealing with your business to the customer concerned.
Resolving customer service problems publicly can be an excellent move because you have the chance to turn a negative experience around for the individual concerned and you get to demonstrate to all of your followers how good you are at customer service.
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