The Art of Social Media Customer Service

Long gone are the days where everyone had to dial a number to complain. Now it’s easier to get online and tweet to businesses, or write negative reviews on Facebook.

Over the years, social media has become a serious change agent in the business model by providing an easy way for customers to interact with businesses at the click of a button. Now more than ever before, customer service defines marketing for today’s brands.

With increasingly growing interactions between companies and customers in two of the largest social media sites so far, it’s time to pay more attention to your business and customer online interactions if you haven’t already. In the past two years, Twitter has seen a 2.5X increase in the number of Tweets to brands and their customer service usernames. In 2015 alone, over a billion people visit Facebook business pages each month!

Keep in mind these quick customer service tips to keep up with the latest social media growth rates:

  1. Complaints should be your first priority. Did you know 72% of consumers expect a response from businesses within an hour of tweeting? That being said, don’t lose your customers by neglecting them or waiting too long to respond. Any public, digital negative review puts your brand at risk and a negative or nonexistent response only hurts your business more.When responding to complaints publicly, keep it short, personable and professional.
  2. Don’t wait to respond to questions online. Although responding a question through social media isn’t as quick as a phone conversation, still take the time to provide answers. Last month, Facebook introduced more communication tools specifically for answering questions, including the public display of an average response time for private messages between a Page and customers. The quicker you learn to use these tools, the quicker it will be to build your brand.

The social media strategy behind a brand is extremely important, but it’s not complete without great customer service in today’s social world. Stay updated with changes in your social media platforms to keep on top of your marketing.