Accent marketing just concluded a recent study that surveyed over 1,000 consumers throughout the United States. The study revealed Facebook as the most favoured social media channel, for customer service- with a percentage of about 82%. It is understood that customers have transcended the era of spending hours calling a toll-free number or sending a complaint email which could be lost in the technological ecosystem, to now utilizing multiple social media channels.
This report also revealed these interesting statistics:
-About a third of consumers use Facebook to communicate with a customer service representative
-72 percent of consumers only want to interact with the brand when they comment on social media channels
-82 percent use Facebook to speak with a customer service representative
-44 percent of consumers expect a response from the brand on Facebook over other social media platforms
-72 percent of consumers only want to interact with the brand when they comment on a social media channel.
With the above data and other similar research carried out by firms like eDigitalResearch, it has become clear that social customer service has become critical for companies. Companies should spend less time on paid advertising campaign to get more likes but more time on engaging its current Facebook fans/customers.
Ways to get more customer experience likes than hates:
This has got nothing to do with paying for Facebook brand page likes but providing top notch customer service that leads to satisfied customers endearing to your brand.
1)Be Proactive: If you provide services like telecommunication, gas, transportation or something similar and you realized an outage or a disruption to your service. The best thing to do is to write a post and apologize in advance to customers that could be affected by this. It is crucial you assure them it is a priority and a rough estimate to when that would be resolved. This helps prevent multiple complaints and questions on your Facebook page.
2) Using multiple comments in a single response: A time saving and productive technique in Facebook customer service, is the use of a single response for multiple comments or questions. When a similar question is asked by multiple persons the best approach is to combine them into one comment and use direct mentions, so all the recipients will be notified.
3) Don’t delete but enlighten: Negative comments are bound to be written on your brand wall from time to time. Don’t be quick to delete as this would have a negative impact on the customer and subsequent customers that would be told of your action. Remember it is on your wall and your page fans can see that a particular comment- apparently negative has just varnished. The best thing to do is to respond to the comment and end by enlightening the customer as to why a particular problem is present or an issue was unresolved.
4) Prompt is golden: Responding to a question or comment is important but what appears to be more important is the time it takes for the response to be made. It would be great to have a social media executive to check the brands’ Facebook page at least once every three hours. Remember, the longer a question or comment is left bare- not acknowledged or responded to, the more disgruntled the poster would be, which could have a spiral effect on other users. The main point is, if you do not have an answer to a question, do acknowledge the question and point out to the poster that you do not have the answer at that point in time but would obtain the requested information as soon as possible.
5) Acknowledge the happy customers: Learn to respond to happy customers who litter and glitter your wall with praise and satisfaction. Make them feel it’s a privilege for you to provide them with a great service.
6) Engage them in a trending topic: A very good way to reduce the complaints and negativity on your Facebook page is to engage your customers, on a trending event. With the FIFA world cup trending you could ask them who they think is the best player. This brings more involvement and contribution to your page as well as reducing the tension that could ensue from constant complaints. Remember to give a further comment after a few days thanking them for their answers.
Facebook has grown beyond a social media platform to a critical customer service channel where brand could either make or mar their customer experience.
