The advent of social media marketing indisputably transformed the basic nature of customer service. Rendering satisfactory customer service today is about promptly interacting with your customers, responding to their queries and allaying their misgivings through the use of technology.
Social media is the ideal platform for your business house to convince customers it can be caring, sympathetic, engaging and helpful.
Here are some important steps you can take to integrate customer service into your social media marketing efforts:
Customers often turn disgruntled when their views are sidelined and their complaints ignored. Social media helps you to immediately engage with them, answer their queries and attend to their complaints. This will generate a lot of goodwill and prompt your existing customers to recommend your company to other prospects.
Even if the customer is not always right, it is prudent to adopt an apologetic tone and not try to be aggressive in your replies/rebuttals. Customers can often afford to be impolite but that gives you no license to be angry or ruthless. The simple dictum is ‘customers are always right even if they are not’. At least, they should be made to feel they are right and social media is a great help in accomplishing this.
Quite often customers may have some concrete and constructive suggestions for improving your products/services. You can know the pulse of the customers when you interact with them over the social media. Even if some of their recommendations are impractical or worthless, you can politely explain the problem and this will go a long way in building robust customer relationships.
If your products/services are tech-based, make sure you have technically qualified staff on standby to help customers understand the problems and learn about its proper use and application.
Making customers feel that you appreciate their concerns and promptly express your reactions will assuredly keep them coming back to you whenever they need your products/services. Social media is indeed the right platform for developing customer loyalty.
Take advantage of your social media platforms to offer special packages, seasonal discounts, useful product information, industry news and even some occasional prize giveaways including New Year gifts.
Your Turn:
What is your social media marketing strategy ? We’d love to hear your thoughts.