Gone are the days when customers would pick up their phones to call a company to seek support or complain. Nowadays, people are picking up their phones for a much different reason – to jump to social media and make a very public complaint about a product or service, in the hope of a faster response.
One of the benefits of being active in terms of customer service on social media is being able to connect with your customers in real time. You are presented with an opportunity to meet a problem and you fix it. You get asked a question and you answer it. And that’s all there is to it, right? Well, not quite.
According to Conversocial, more than half of all consumers expect their queries to be answered within two hours on social media. However, it’s about more than simply providing hasty responses, just to prove how responsive you are. While, yes, your customers expect a swift response, few companies really endeavour to get to the bottom of the question.
The opportunity to get to the real cause of the problem can save you – and your other customers – the hassle of having to deal with the same problem in the future.
But if you utilise twitter, or whatever platform the customer uses to reach out to you, – and their instantaneous engagement capabilities – for customer service, you have the ability to develop a dialogue with a customer in real time and get to the root cause of the issue.
Not long ago, the Shoeboxed Australia team was presented with a relatively simple question on Twitter, to which there was a quick and easy answer that could have been delivered in a 140-character response. However, because customer service is really important to us, we gave consideration to why the question was asked.
This is how it played out…
Tresna Lee, Yelp Australia’s Regional Director of Marketing reached out to Shoeboxed on twitter with a simple question –
Tresna was concerned that her emailed receipts were taking a while to appear in her Shoeboxed Australia account. Generally, depending on system speeds and backlog, it can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour for an upload to appear.
Rather than taking that at face value and patting ourselves on the back for a speedy response, we took a step back to the tech end to see if anything else was going on that might be contributing, to ensure that Tresna, as well as other Shoeboxed Australia customers, wouldn’t experience the problem again.
What we found was something that needed fixing for Tresna and a couple of other customers
Using social media for customer service means that you can offer quality support, respond to queries and develop a full understanding of any issues.
It also lets customers see behind the tech curtain from time to time and demonstrates to customers that you’re paying attention and adjusting your processes accordingly.
Having efficient response times and providing customers with a deeper understanding of the query at hand is just the beginning of a real social media customer service strategy. Shoeboxed Australia follows a number of other social media tips to ensure that our social media interactions are as effective as possible. You might like to consider these too:
- Give your brand some personality – be relatable, conversational & get to know your customers. If they can relate to you, they are much more likely to feel like an important part of your business.
- Don’t wait around for your customers to come to you – set up a search for direct and indirect mentions of your brand. If you see a problem forming, take action and reach out.
- Follow up – go that extra mile and check in with customers you’ve previously helped. Make sure they are still happy and know that you care.
Of course, if you have any questions or queries, we’d love to have a chat! Tweet us @shoeboxedaust or give us a call on 1300 00 1333.
