Unless you’re considerably behind the curve, the chances are that your company has already looked into how you might use social media in your day to day operations. What’s more, you may well have decided that it is a potentially profitable avenue to explore, and if that is the case, then you will have joined the many thousands of firms who have taken that same decision.
Currently however, what you and the majority of those other firms are using social media for, has probably been limited largely to marketing or customer attraction. That doesn’t have to be the case though, as the most popular social media platforms could provide you with the ideal opportunity to offer customer service truly in line with the modern customer and their needs.
Why to Consider Social Media for Customer Service
Many companies are increasingly being wise to the fact that customer service via social media is an avenue that they can’t afford not to explore. Many modern consumers after all, communicate if not exclusively via social media channels then certainly more often in that fashion than over the phone or by email. For these consumers then, the idea of finding a customer service phone number and waiting on hold for half an hour or of sending an email and waiting hours for a response, is likely to seem cumbersome, slow and inefficient.
The comparative immediacy that customer service via social media can provide therefore, is one of a number of major reasons why your firm may wish to consider this more forward thinking use of social media platforms. Through the main social media platforms, your admin staff or customer service representatives can receive an immediate notification of when a customer messages you or submits a post and can get back to them straight away.
On top of that immediacy, the fact that the customer’s reply will be provided by the same means that they communicate with their friends and family also helps to add an extra personal touch. Customer service via social media in fact, is the closest a firm that doesn’t have direct face-to-face customer interaction can get to providing a fully personal service and removes known customer annoyances like keypad menus for customer service phone lines and automated email replies.
Finally, social media as a channel for customer service also provides benefits for both companies and customers in terms of follow up. For the customer, if a problem is not immediately resolved or a question instantaneously answered, there is already a direct channel of communication open for further contact. That means that they do not have to once again go through the rigmarole of calling the customer service line and risk speaking to a different individual who isn’t familiar with their issue. Instead they can simply reply to the company’s most recent message, comment on their post or do whatever is most appropriate for the platform in question and a representative from the company will have access to the full string of communication so far.
For the firm themselves meanwhile, the ease and immediacy of communication combines to make it much simpler to follow up on customer service enquiries and to check with customer’s that their experience was satisfactory. A quick social media message to check that a customer’s query was effectively answered, would be welcomed by most consumers and honestly replied to by the vast majority as well.
Social media then, as well as being a vital modern marketing tool, can be a really useful and beneficial extra channel for your customer service efforts and if used efficiently could have a profound effect on the customer satisfaction delivered by your firm.
