Читать книгу Social Media Marketing For Dummies - Shiv Singh - Страница 58

After customers found that they could quickly get a company’s attention on social media platforms, the notion of customer service changed forever. Previously, the only option consumers had was to get on the phone and wait patiently until they could speak to a representative. Often, the outcome was less than satisfactory.

Presently, consumers make it a point to seek out companies that offer them a voice on social platforms. The SmartInsights study from 2017 found that:

 Sixty-three percent of customers expect companies to offer customer service via their social media channels.

 Ninety percent of social media users have already used social media as a way to communicate with a brand or a business.

 Customers prefer social media 34.5 percent of the time for customer service compared to 24.7 percent for live chat, 19.4 percent for email, and 16.1 percent for toll-free phone service.

If you are dissatisfied with a purchase or service, you can use social media to tweet, post, or otherwise rate your way onto the radar screen of the company in question.

Here are some post-sales SMM tactics that you can use to improve customer service:

 Demonstrate that you are really able to do something.It will be readily apparent if your employees on social media are not really empowered to actually help customers. It’s great to listen, but if you don’t take action, listening will prove to be a hollow exercise.

 Provide links on social platforms to information, discounts, and special promotions.It’s all about the customer, so make sure that your response always has real, demonstrable value. Ask your management what options you have for rewarding the customer. How about a private briefing about your next product?

 Offer tips and video from customer service on FAQs.Don’t wait for a hail of tweets to show up. If you know there’s a problem, create content that speaks to it. Then go back and show the customer how your solution cut customer service calls in half. That will get management’s attention and buy-in.

 Use different platforms for different kinds of customer service.Make sure that you have several levels of response available to the customer. For example, you can use a specific Twitter handle that’s separate from your primary brand’s Twitter handle for quick responses. For questions that require more investigation, you can direct them to your website or set up an outside service like Get Satisfaction, as shown in Figure 3-5, to answer questions.

 Use photos to show that real people are doing interesting things.With a camera in every phone, it’s hard not to take snapshots of events, celebrations, and charitable activities. At every event, pick someone as the designated picture taker. This serves to authenticate your staff.

FIGURE 3-5: The home page of Get Satisfaction.