Social media offers a wealth of opportunities for keeping in touch with your prospects and customers, maintaining customer relationships, and building your brand. All this you probably already knew.
But did you know it's also indispensable as a customer service tool? Put social media to work shoring up your customer service skills with these four tips.
1. Respond and Interact
Social media is all about interaction, and it’s important that customers perceive your business to be standing by, ready to help. Whether customers have complaints, are praising your business or are simply making comments about your products or services, it’s important to engage and interact with them. You can use social media to make them feel as if they’re having a conversation with your company. While you might not be able to respond to every single comment, if you respond regularly, customers and clients will notice.
2. Ask Questions
The best way to get a feel for what your customers truly think of your product or service is to ask—and there’s no better place to do that than on social media. Ask your customers how they're using your products and where they heard about you. You can even ask questions about how to improve your products and services. (You might be surprised at how useful the answers can be.)
People love making comments and being heard, and asking them questions is the perfect way to facilitate this. Plus, it’s like conducting an informal survey. Reading and responding to customers' answers to your questions will give you valuable information about them and also about your products.
3. Be Useful
Your social media sites are ideal places for disseminating information about your brand, product or service, but you want your social channels to provide valuable content as well. Your customers will respond more favorably if you post content that ties to the product or service you sell as opposed to bombarding them with ads. People are on social media for engaging content and interaction. You can facilitate this by providing them with information instead of advertisements.
4. Connect Your Online and Offline Worlds
People reading your Facebook posts or Twitter feed may also be your customers in the brick-and-mortar world, so it only makes sense to take things offline sometimes. That might mean using social media to promote an in-person event, such as a mixer or other social gathering, and inviting your prospects and customers to attend. Or it might mean giving people who have complaints or concerns the name and phone number or email address of a customer service representative who can deal one on one with their problems offline.
As useful as social media is, it’s not the only game in town. Sometimes, a face-to-face meeting or even a phone call can be more valuable than an online connection, and social media can help you to facilitate these vital, real world connections.
Social media is great for building brand awareness and engaging with customers. And with a little creative thinking, you can use it as a valuable customer service tool, too.
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