Many businesses moved online in 2020 and are struggling to provide quality customer service on digital channels. Matt Fingerhut, Senior VP of Global Customer Org at Hootsuite, shares the technology tools and practices today’s brands need for social customer care success.
Two years ago, the world saw a massive shift in consumer behavior, as people turned to digital channels for so much of their social, entertainment and buying needs. In particular, the popularity of social messaging grew faster than any other digital channel and led to a transformation in how people interact with brands.
Not surprisingly, tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook noticed and implemented key updates that make it easier for customers to connect with their favorite brands via social messaging. Google launched Business Messages, embedding conversational experiences into maps and search results, and Facebook expanded private messaging so that Facebook Messenger and Instagram users can chat across platforms – opening Instagram’s application programming interface (API) to businesses.
Given this wave of customer interest and demand via these new channels, many brands are struggling to effectively and efficiently manage demand. Customer care teams need to adopt new practices to keep pace and deliver brand-worthy experiences to their customers.
What Is Social Customer Care?
Social customer care is the delivery of customer service using messaging and social media channels to address consumer questions or concerns. Nearly two out of threeOpens a new window people say they would prefer to message rather than call a business. Customer support via social media is crucial because it allows customers to reach support teams on the platforms they already use. Consumers connect to brands on the vast array of messaging platforms they use every day, from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to Apple iMessage, What’s App, Telegram and WeChat.
Social customer care allows you to meet your customers where they already are and build stronger connections. But given the breadth, frequency and scale of queries facing today’s businesses, how can you maintain excellent customer service and ensure consumers aren’t waiting for a response?
How Technology Tools Can Enhance Social Customer Care
1. Centralized response
An essential first step is to ensure you’re equipped to support queries coming from a broad range of social channels in one place. Managing each platform separately is both inefficient and impractical. Instead, dedicated social customer care platforms enable you to view all your customer conversations from a unified dashboard and monitor them centrally, including social media networks and messaging services. Some social customer care solutions streamline over a dozen product integrations – including WhatsApp Business, social media, live chat and SMS, and your website or app.
2. Automation for speed and effectiveness
Next, by implementing automation tools, customer conversations can be prioritized, triaged and responded to across multiple channels in real-time. Customers can get the answers they’re looking for nearly instantly while freeing up your customer service teams to deal with more complex, more strategically important issues. Your virtual customer service agents can be customizable and improve response times while still delivering natural, empathetic and helpful responses to your customers.
3. Data integration
Social customer care platforms can be integrated with your CRM (customer relationship management) and contact center data platforms, giving your teams the context to provide seamless and personal customer service. As research shows, whether in-store, online or over the telephone, 75% of UK consumersOpens a new window hate repeating themselves when they have an issue with a brand – something we can all relate to. Having a complete view of customer information and accessing it easily helps resolve questions and problems quickly. Â
4. Measurement and reporting
Some social customer care solutions also offer real-time productivity and engagement reporting that lets you track and measure performance metrics. You can generate customized reports to set targets such as efficiency rates, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) and initial response times, and send surveys to capture the voice of the customer. Having this added intelligence helps ensure that your social customer care program is dynamic and efficient even as you grow and scale.
See More: 5 Tips To Integrate TikTok Into Your Video Marketing Strategy in 2022
Delivering Customer Happiness
Brands are taking full advantage of these innovations, with more and more of them ramping up their digital presence on social media platforms. Not surprisingly, as brands smartly go where customers prefer to hang out, their customers want to interact with them more. Average weekly customer support requests have been up 20 percentOpens a new window since the pandemic.
Given today’s 4.62 billion social media users, per Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 reportOpens a new window , social customer care is becoming an integral and expected part of the customer experience. By putting the right technology into action to engage with your audience and manage conversations effectively, you can positively impact your customer care experience.
How are you leveraging tech tools to deliver more engaging customer experiences? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to know more from you!