Customer service and customer experience transformation will be supercharged via social media going forward. In a survey of 1500 millennials and Gen Z globally, Teenspire Global Mission found a clear preference for quality brand interactions on social media. Thus the more mature your social media strategy, the more your chances of acing customer service and customer experience.

Tips and tricks on how you leverage social media to master customer care

Social media

A trend that has amplified significantly during the pandemic is looking for a service via social media. Customers are keen to try on new products and services and like to research within their digital communities for recommendations and feedback experimenting with a new brand or product. Whilst the channels vary based on demographics, and phone, email and chat (web or phone) remain high on the preference list, social media is gaining in importance.

Today’s customer seeks high-quality customer service at the speed of light, that’s verified by a Customer Think survey that cited 80% of customers expecting better service. They want convenience, ease of transaction and new products and services to delight them in their digitized lifestyle. They are quick to applaud or openly share their grievances, and therefore if brands are proactive they can improve customer service scores by engaging better on social media.

Some top tips are listed below:

1. Brand Positioning A polished brand appeal on social media goes a long way. It’s worth spending the time brainstorming and researching the social media platform you choose to engage on.

• Your brands values, identity and credibility should be clearly articulated.

• Work closely with marketing, PR and sales teams to ensure the voice, video and visuals tell a common story

• Tie your objective with the brand positioning

2. Listening

Listening and providing exemplary customer service once the brand appeal has been established falls on the shoulders of the customer experience (CX) team.

The impression they make, will reflect on your overall brand. Therefore, it is important to collaborate across departments to decide on the resources, tools, and messaging that you will arm your agents with to ensure the issues get resolved in the first interaction.

Appointing agents is an important decision. Decide what your social media customer base is and allocate resources accordingly. The agents managing your social media customer service must be patient and deal with angry or frustrated customers with politeness. Empathy and positive responses pay dividends and should be the front of mind. You must also leverage social media monitoring tools to watch out for posts where your company maybe tagged. 3. Responding Once the guidelines for social media presence have been outlined, it’s important to streamline the support functions – logistics, operations and establish frameworks of how social media aligns with your call center.

4. Managing

Social media is now the most preferred method of customer service and support for people in the age group 18-54. The customer service they are expecting is the same as what they’d receive if they called or sent an email. As such, synchronizing the tools and messaging, as well as providing a resolution at first contact is key.

Make sure you allocate dedicated resources to service the social handles your customers use for customer service. Provide contact information, be responsive to create good will.

5. Monitoring

Quality benchmarks must be established at the onset and agents must be coached and incentivized for positive behavior and interactions.

Customer service and customer experience transformation will be supercharged via social media going forward. In a survey of 1500 millennials and Gen Z globally, Teenspire Global Mission found a clear preference for quality brand interactions on social media. Thus the more mature your social media strategy, the more your chances of acing customer service and customer experience.

How to create data-driven customer experiences. Read on.