Social Customer Service – Keeping Your Fans in the Loop!

If you’re looking for your customers, you should jump on social platforms – a place where most of them live. Unfortunately, not all businesses take advantage of social media customer care yet. Although there is a tendency to its usage year by year and I’m sure very soon it will become a must.

Once I mentioned that for business success we should consider social channels not only a must, but also something like “useful and pleasant”. 

The new research showcases statistics for the popular social networks ideal for marketers in the US, where Facebook comes first, then Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  

Key elements of social customer care

The first important thing about social customer service is tracking your presence in all the platforms you use. As you have no right to miss anything, set alerts if you are short of time to check the messages all the time.

Now when you received an inquiry or a complaint, be quick to respond. Remember - in the social media two days are equal to two weeks. Politeness and patience are the next useful attitudes while dealing with any type of customers.

Another specific feature is being informative. Update your fans with every single renewal or failure. Anyway many of them will be informed about problems, so it’s reasonable to learn about everything from you. This can also prevent their being angry or dissatisfied with your service. Just a short note can change their attitude towards you.

Why not reward your best fans? A great idea used by many businesses already! Imagine receiving a message “Best customer/fan of the week/month!” – so pleasant and motivating! Just remembered while posting in  DZone I used to receive “Best post of the day”, which was also retweeted in DZone’s Twitter and made me twice happy.

The future of customer service is quite obvious – so if you still stay out from social networks, it’s high time to show your presence – keeping your online reputation up!

The Traditional Support Channel Persists!

As a confirmation of my last post about call centers continuing to be the center of reliable and customer-friendly communication, I’d like to share an Infographic with some great facts and statistics by Zendesk:

• 79% of customers still prefer to use the telephone to interact with a customer service center and only 12% prefer to use web chat (though that number continues to climb!)
• 72% of companies are aware of their customers’ preference and place value on their call centers.
• An interesting fact about agents’ gender: 71% of agents are female and only 29% male.

Clearly call centers will continue to play a big role in many companies’ success, driving high customer satisfaction scores and ongoing customer loyalty.