“Please stay online. All our customer service representatives are busy at the moment. Your call is important to us.”
How many times have you come across this situation? Reaching out to customer service executives on phone call seems to be a difficult task, isn’t it? Don’t you think there has to be a better way to provide assistance to customers, some alternative way that is not only fast but also makes the customer feel valued?
‘Social Customer Care’ – The New Marketing Tactic
In this noisy world of marketing where the attention span of people is constantly decreasing and vague advertisements add no value to the brand, offering customer service over social media platforms is quite a powerful tool. ‘Social customer care’ is the new norm in marketing. Crafting the customer service strategy that revolves around making the best use of social media channels helps in enhancing the brand awareness.
Social customer care is an opportunity to get your brand closer to its customer community. Offering customer service over social channels like Twitter or Facebook amplifies your brand story to a great extent and this is what sets it apart from competitors.
Using Customers as Brand Ambassadors
“Not me, but my customers represent my brand. It is the reflection of customers journey with us.”
Social media is a platform where customers share their experiences and the entire world can see it. Be it a good or bad comment, company can respond to it appropriately and resolve the customer’s issue promptly. Receiving exceptional social customer care has the power to convert customer’s negative post to positive one.
Customer’s post on company’s social media profile adds a personal touch to the brand and this makes it look more real, trustworthy and reliable. What can be better than making your customers the brand ambassadors of your company!
The Double-Edged Sword
Leveraging the strength of social media platforms as a customer service tool is a debatable topic. While some experts think of it as a game-changer customer service tool, others are worried of the transparency this tool bring along with it that could harm the brand reputation.
Example 1: Bad Form of Social Customer Care
Indigo Airlines has been using social media channels to address its passengers queries. However, the social media team at Indigo failed to catch the sarcasm of a passenger who complained for mistakenly sending his luggage to Hyderabad while he traveled to Kolkata. The default reply from Indigo Airlines was nothing less than a laughing treat to Twitteratis.
Courtesy: Twitter
Example 2: Effective use of Social Customer Care
Hootsuite has always been on its toes when it comes to serving customers on social media channels. It is known for sending quick replies to its users’ queries and provide instantaneous solution or help. Following image shows how social customer care team at Hootsuite helped in resolving the user’s issue. After receiving satisfying customer care from social media team, the customer replied positively and this enhanced the company’s brand value.
Courtesy: Twitter
Social Media for Customer Care: YES or NO?
“Have you ever used any social media platform to write positive or negative comment about your experience with the brand?”
“Yes definitely, I have shared my reviews, raised complains and even appreciated brands on social media.“
Several companies have already embraced social media as a powerful customer service channel. However to just embark up on this journey is not sufficient – it has to be done in the right way!
To cut it short, allow social media add value to your brand by taking care of few simple things as mentioned below:
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Speed is quintessential for the success of social support. Respond to customer’s social post instantly, ideally within 20 to 30 minutes.
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Identify subtle cues from the customer’s post and accordingly using the right tone of voice in your reply.
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Make use of friendly tone to make the customer feel cared. Use wording that make the customer feel assured that you are going to make things right very soon.
Start your journey to earning more loyal customers and building stronger relationships with them through correct and effective use of social media for exceptional customer service!
