Website Builder UK gives a unique insight into the ride of social media customer care, and how it is slowly adapting into one of the world’s favorite customer service channels available. Customers like to use social media for a number of reasons including speed, ease of access and personalized responses. Using social media customer care can also be beneficial for the brand as social media can cut costs, raise the reputation of the brand as a whole and has the potential to increase sales.

For any company it is imperative they use social media customer media customer care correctly, so let’s take a look at 10 of the best tips that can help you make the most of these channels and make your brand the best it can be.

Don’t Keep the User Waiting

More often than not the customer will be using social media as a customer service channel for one reason, they want a response quickly. Usually, people will be expecting a response in less than an hour, no matter what time of day they get in touch. Very few companies actually reach this expectation, however, the majority will respond in 24 hours or less. The quicker you respond to a query or complaint the better.

Make Sure You Sound Human

People like to deal with other people, rather than getting an automated response from a machine. The key to a great response is to be both personal and empathetic as you try to resolve the issue that the customer is having. Social media immediately gives you the opportunity to hold a conversation with someone and allow the tone to become more natural and casual, with the ability to be able to think about how you make a response. Some companies even use signatures at the end of a social media post to help to humanize it.

Avoid Social Complaints

If possible, it is advisable to keep complaints on the private side of social media. If someone complains on a social media channel and if it is an issue that is going to take some resolving, more often than not, it is best to private message them. This will avoid too many negative comments on your brand’s page, unless, of course, you can resolve the issue in a way that you want others to see.

Learn from Old Conversations

As with everything, you will get better with practice. If you have trouble dealing with a customer and managed to work out a good way to make them happy, make sure to remember how you did that so that you can go back at a later date and use the same customer service tactic again. The more customers that you speak to through social media, the more natural it will start to become.

Get Insight from Your Conversations

A social media conversation is a treasure trove of information just waiting to be made use of. These conversations can help you with feedback, repeat business, demographics, and overall give a unique look into where your customers are from, who is buying from you and what they are thinking.

Follow Your Customers

Trends don’t last forever, and the favorite social media channel is constantly changing. Just because you are set up on one channel, you have to be prepared to move on when and where your customers do. This may mean completely transitioning from one platform to another, or simply adding another social media platform to your collection. The great thing about social media is that profiles can be made quickly and efficiently, so starting fresh doesn’t take up too much time, and usability can be easily picked up.

Pick up on Old Conversations

If an issue was brought up a long time ago that couldn’t be solved, then a couple of months down the line you are able to resolve the problem, then you should go back and tell the customer that brought it up in the first place. It would be easy to hope that the customer has just moved on and forgotten about the issue, but going back to them proves that you are a company that listens to their customer’s issues and does their best to solve them. Not only will they then know that their problem has been resolved, but they will also feel that they have received a very personal level of service.

Pay Attention

Although it would make life a lot easier, unfortunately, a customer will not tag you every time they are speaking about you, even if it is something as simple as misspelling your brand name. Therefore, it comes down to the company to make sure they are paying attention to social media and finding all the opportunities that they can to communicate with their current or potential customers.

Establish a Voice

As a company, you should establish a voice that you use throughout all your online content, even social media platforms. Each member of the customer service team should deliver a personalized customer service experience as an advocate of the brand that they represent.

Be Sure to Check Your Responses

Communicating with someone on social media can be demanding due to how fast paced it is. However, that doesn’t mean that the social media responses shouldn’t be of the highest possible standards, writing something down is permanent, and the worst thing that can happen for a company is for a customer to use what you have said against you. Even something as small as spelling and grammar mistakes can lead to negative connotations of the brand as a whole.