Top 10 Tips for Social Media Customer Service Engagement

By Lance Fried

1. Respond in a Timely Manner Responding quickly, even when you don't have the answer right away can make all the difference. Additionally, your social media customer service hours should be the same as your hours of operation and other service channels. This especially applies for businesses like airlines, hotels, etc. 2. Don't Forget to Apologize or Offer Thanks Apologize when appropriate and offer thanks to customers who are praising you. Likewise, offer thanks to customers who present challenges – that is "thanks for the opportunity to serve." Change up how you say it each time so you don't sound repetitive.  3. Respect Customer Privacy Move the conversation to a DM or private channel when it's appropriate to keep information private. 4. Listen to Customer Feedback and Topic Trends Don't be afraid to ask for feedback from customers - this can show them you care about their satisfaction. Social media can give insight into your customers' opinions, satisfaction level, and overall trends. 5. Post in Addition to Replying Be proactive with your social customer service by posting useful information, updates, tips, giveaways, polls, URLs to knowledge base articles and more to keep followers engaged and in the know. 6. Have a Personality Never automate or repeat the same generic response over and over. Personalized unique interactions with customers on social media create stronger consumer/brand relationships. Let agents include their name or initials in their replies so customers know they are talking to a real person. EX:  "@Customer I can absolutely help you with that, do you have a product code? ^Alex" 7. Stay on the Customer's Preferred Channel They would have called if they wanted to, so unless they agree or suggest to change channels, don't force it. 8. Know your Customer If possible, link your CRM to your engagement platform to identify  customers on social media and to understand things like their internal influence and priority level. Additionally, track and record each customer's social interaction history to give agents insight on previous issues, sentiment level, interaction frequency, and previous agent replies. 9. Define your Company's Rules of Engagement Making sure your entire social engagement team is following the same business rules is essential. You don't want to offer refunds to some and not to others with the same issue… especially on a public channel. You also want to be sure that your social media efforts are consistent with your overall customer service goals and standards- Social media should be treated like any other customer service channel. 10. Strive for Performance Excellence Measure, report, and take action on service level agreements, key performance indicators, and supervisory data to ensure customer focus, improved outreach, and the establishment of essential goals for your teams. Do you have other top tips to addd to the list? Tweet @SoCoCare with your best social media engagement tips!