Social media engagement with your customers

Today, most of the companies takes the the social media customer service thing wrong. They typically monitor social channels like Twitter, Facebook, and others and react to the comments; trying to respond in and fix customer's complaints. If all the companies are doing the same, responding to customer complaints. Companies needs to figure out; how to take social media customer service to a much higher level?

No longer do they just react to comments on social channels, they also engage in conversations with their customer communities, they interact and provide valuable information in the process. Reaction is still an important part of social service but there's so much more.

First let's look at the concept of reaction. Here are three important points to consider.

Number one speed counts. Reacting and reaction time is extremely important. If I wanted to have my question answered two hours from now I would have waited two hours to ask the question. Now regardless of the social channel reaction time is paramount. SocialBakers had an interesting stat that the average wait time in social media is Nine hours. The 2014 American Express global customer service barometer indicated that 25% of consumers who have a complaint on social media expect a response time of less than an hour (sorry couldn’t find the recent data on this). The bottom line is when a customer complaint they want to get an answer now.

Number two stay on the same. I'm a social channel. If somebody approaches you via Twitter. Try not to move them to Facebook. Sure you may want to move the customer to a private area such as a Twitter direct message forum and there are many times that you might have to move the customer to a phone call or maybe some other channel but try as best you can to keep the customer on the same channel if possible.

Number three finish strong regardless of how upset a customer might be. Start there. See what you can do to solve the problem or answer the question in such a way that the customer would want to say something nice about you via their favourite social channel. Then once the issue is resolved you have turned what may have been or started out to be potentially negative PR into something extremely positive as the social customer service experience transforms into engagement. Here are three more ideas to consider.

• Consider developing an app. Now you don't have to spend a lot of money to get something that will engage and interact with your customers. The app can share new information about products or better ways to use your products and much more.
• Create a content marketing campaign. This is perhaps one of the strongest social media strategies that you can have. The key is to deliver content versus blatant marketing. It's not about asking for business it's about delivering value. Do it right and the business follows the next idea.
• Use YouTube create videos that deliver value with solutions to commonly asked questions. I once bought a Printer and had incredible difficulty setting it up. All I had to do was put the model number in the YouTube search box and up came a video that helped me setup my printer. It was like the customer service rep was standing right over me and helping me do exactly. Customers will leave comments under your video so be sure to interact with them. There is well now social media customer service is powerful. It's more than just reacting. Engage and interact and you'll experience more appreciation and loyalty from your customers.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. As always, I’m just a tweet away @insananil

NOTE: The postings on this site are based on my research and expertise, and don’t necessarily represent my current or previous employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.