Social media and Customer Service

Social media has turned customer service upside down. Once upon a time, a company had the ability to respond (or not) on their own time table, but now the fact that your customer has instant access to social media means your procedures have to change. You can't go out to any retail establishment or visit any website without seeing the company's social media icons and addresses. They've learned well and are fully on board with asking you to follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and more. The signs are everywhere but if you're ever in a push and can't find a store's social media identity, you only need to pull out your smartphone and google it, and you'll have the information you need in less than 30 seconds.

And while this may be a super-convenient way for the consumer to find your social networks and engage with you and your business when they're happy and excited, what if they're unhappy? Have you put the proper procedures into place to handle most situations that could come about when your customer reaches out on social media? If not, then you run the risk of a potential nightmare.

Everything that you do on social is (or should be) a road map to engagement. You would hope that ALL the engagement from your customers would be glowing reviews of how great your product is, but let's be honest - that's just not always the case. Human nature dictates that we're quicker to complain than compliment. Responding to compliments is always fun... complaints and "constructive feedback" isn't always the same case. So how do you prepare yourself or your staff to handle when your customer starts engaging with you?

1. First and foremost, you have to know about it. At this point, I feel pretty confident that you have systems in place to monitor your brand and any activity happening, but just in case you don't, you need to use some kind of platform like HootSuite, Radian6, etc. to allow you to see what is going on with your social media channels. If you don't, at the very least, you should be checking your social media accounts at their native sites as well as having alerts set up thru Google alerts.
2. Respond. Another obvious statement, but you wouldn't believe how many companies don't respond at all - doesn't matter if it's good OR bad. Don't be that company. You have spent all this time, effort, and money to become an "engaged and likable" brand, don't blow it now. If you have customers that are tweeting at you, commenting on your blog posts, or chatting with you on your Facebook page—respond! Talk back to them! Nine times out of ten, it's all good things that are being said so enjoy your successes!
3. But what if it's negative? Well, you're going to respond then, too, just in a different way. Many years ago, I worked for a local restaurant in the area called Lucky32, and I learned more about customer service there than I did anywhere else. One of the big lessons I learned was to welcome criticism from our staff and customers. Why? Because it showed us where we needed to improve. The same is true with social media. These people are your company's "undercover" eyes and ears. They see the REAL deal - not the glorified marketing message that you have so carefully created. So if they come to your Facebook wall and complain or Tweet some aggravation, THANK them, and then ask them to contact you offline so that you can help resolve their issue. If they really care about your company and their experience, they'll get in touch, but there will be instances where they won't. You can try again to reach them, but if they don't respond after the 2nd attempt, let it go. If anyone else is looking, they'll see that your company made a valiant effort to fix the situation.
4. Always be on the lookout. Social media is a non-stop job. Yes, you have to take a break and have a life, but you can have certain alerts pushed through to your phone, and then you can determine if it warrants an immediate action or not. I have alerts set up for every single client we have. If someone directly tweets at them, sends them a direct message (on any channel), posts on the wall, etc., I will get an alert. If it needs to be handled immediately, I'll do it, and if it can wait for traditional business hours, I'll let it sit.
5. Be timely. Social media happens in real time - so should your response. Going back to #4, I'm not saying you have to do it immediately, but don't wait 7 days either. I was in a local grocery store (that shall remain nameless), and I was attempting to redeem my weekly specials, but they were out of stock. Again. This happens every single week, and I finally "went social" on them and sent a tweet expressing my angst over their inability to plan better. It took them 7 days to respond to my tweet. As a matter of fact, I had to go back to see what they were talking about. Don't do that. That's bad.

Some people are still intimidated by the vastness of social media, but there are so many fantastic opportunities to be had from it. It's just using them to your full advantage and believe me - there are more advantages than disadvantages! Connecting with our customers is why we all do what we do, isn't it?