How to Deliver a Rockstar Customer Experience on Social Media

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A business expert interviewed on CBS recently estimated that the average person sees about 5,000 advertisements per day. The average office worker receives 121 emails per day, many of them unsolicited cold emails asking the recipient to buy a product. Since everyone is inundated with branded content, you have to create a special connection with customers and prospects in order for your brand to stand out.

One way to build strong customer sentiment is to treat customers like rockstars, don’t just treat them acceptably, or even well, treat each and every customer like a true rockstar.

Believe it or not, but social media is a great channel for brands to use when trying to provide outstanding customer experiences for two reasons.

First, over 2 billion people use Facebook each month and over 700 million use Instagram each month (to name two of the largest platforms out there) chances are your customer is on social media.

Second, research shows that customers are turning to social media for support. JD Power found that 67% of customers use social media to access customer support and Nielsen found that 33% of customers prefer using social media for support.

All in all, brands have a great opportunity to create remarkable experiences for customers on social media – here’s how to do it.

Set Expectations With Customers

Brands need to set clear expectations with customers about what they can expect on various social media platforms. Otherwise, your customers may have expectations that your company simply cannot meet – leading to disappointment and poor brand sentiment.

Instead, be sure to communicate with customers on your website and on each social media channel about what they should do if they need customer service. The Dutch airline company, KLM sets customer expectations masterfully using social media.

Setting clear expectations helps to avoid frustration while making it easier for KLM social media managers to satisfy customers in need of help.

Invest In Social Listening Tools

Even the most diligent social media managers need help staying on top of relevant social media chatter across various platforms. That’s where social media listening tools come in.

Social media listening tools allow brand representatives to monitor specific keywords, phrases and hashtags across all major platforms to ensure that no no piece of customer feedback voiced online is missed. Since hashtags are particularly popular on Instagram, it may make sense to invest in a dedicated Instagram analytics platform, my personal favorite being Owlmetrics, in order to properly monitor the platform.

Train Moderators And Social Media Managers

Creating rockstar customer experiences on social media requires great training and practice. Brands that are able to leverage the power of social media to create powerful brand experiences for customers have some sort of predefined playbook in place that moderators, customer support agents or social media managers have reviewed prior to interacting with customers.

Facebook for example announced that they were hiring 3,000 additional social media moderators to ensure that Facebook users have a great experience on the platform. Not only did Facebook announce that they were hiring more moderators, but the company also announced that they were working with experts both inside of Facebook and externally to develop new guidelines designed to help Facebook moderators provide a consistently great experience.

Reward User Generated Content

Resharing user generated content (also known as UGC) is a great way for brands to acknowledge customers while also sharing a compelling image or video with other social media followers.

The BMW Instagram page has embraced user generated content so much that they now use a special hashtag when sharing a piece of UGC, #BMWrepost.

Conclusion

Creating consistent rockstar customer experiences using social media can be made easier when brands clearly communicate expectations with followers, invest in social listening tools, train moderators and reward user generated content.

Another key to delivering outstanding experiences is simply putting the customer at the center of everything your company stands for. At Hubspot for example, company co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah brings a teddy bear named Molly with him to important meetings.

Molly the teddy bear represents the Hubspot customer, and it helps him and his team make sure to deliver outstanding customer experiences consistently across all channels including social media.

AJ Agrawal
I am a regular writer for Forbes, Inc., Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Media (among others), as well as CEO and Chairman of Alumnify Inc. Proud alum from 500 Startups and The University of San Diego. Follow me on Twitter @ajalumnify

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