Why Social Media Customer Service Is Important?

Wendy is just one of those customers who knows how powerful social media can be to get customer service help. She knows companies would not ignore her because everybody connected via social media to read her thoughts. One wrong move from the company can bombard the company with complaints and cause a lot of negative talk online. That is not what companies look for, so they ensure they have as many people operating their social media customer service as they would using their phone lines.

Currently, customer service does not just focus on managing all those emails and taking any calls coming in. This part of business includes social media monitoring. It may seem like additional work, but it does mean being able to provide the help that customers need as soon as it gets in. That means providing excellent service to their customers and making them happy. What you need to understand is that good service makes satisfied customers. After all, satisfied customers make loyal customers.

Instant Service Is What Customers Demand

You may have your own business and a small one at that, but that should not hinder you from using social media for small business. Most customers today are very much used to a fast-paced life. When they need questions answered, they automatically whip out their phones and go online to check out Google. When contacting a friend, they must use their social media accounts. Gone are the days when getting in touch with people meant sending out letters and waiting for their reply.

With that, it is time to up the ante and provide customer service via these popular sites. Social media and customer service should go hand in hand. Sure enough, some people still would take the time to contact you over the phone or even chat with you online. However, many people are moving from these to get you via social media. The good thing about using this is that you would not only be able to help out your customers but also tell everyone just how good your products or services are and show everyone that you value your customers well.

If you were at the end of a customer and wanted some questions answered about a product or a service you just bought, using social media to contact that business would mean that you would also like to be noticed. Everybody sees what goes on when it comes to social media. So if you promptly answer your customers’ inquiries and help them out using such a medium, you are, in a way, advertising yourself as well as promoting the kind of service that you provide. Remember that your product or service may be excellent. Still, if customers have a terrible experience with customer service, they will most likely shift to another brand that offers the same item. Consumers love to feel like they are valued and that they are essential. Small business social media skills should help you achieve this.

Monitoring Social Media And Properly Handling Your Online Reputation

The rising trend nowadays is that consumers usually go to social media sites to find out what is happening to the brands they are interested in or already consuming. If they are on Twitter, they would usually follow the brand’s account. On the other hand, if it is Facebook, they would like to use the page.

When following an account or liking a page, these consumers get real-time updates and information when the brand posts something in their accounts. You may think that these sites are merely for connecting to other people.

Think of it as a way of also connecting to your customers. In a way, these are social media sites for business and greatly help. You can quickly get in touch with your customers through each post or update that you publish on your accounts.

Consumers usually post on these sites and comment when they need to or want to. That is why you have to ensure that you have customer service and social media people to monitor what is going on with your business’s social media accounts.

Most of the time, you would see people giving feedback or remarks about the products or the service you offer them. Do not expect all of these comments to be positive, as many people may not think positively about what you have in the market.

Rather than creating a blog post or posting a status on their respective accounts, consumers would most likely go to your page and post their complaints or any negative experiences with your business there. Customer service social media should help you handle these comments and pacify your angry customers.

Deleting these comments should not help, so ensure you do not do that, as you would only make these people angrier. It is also not a good idea to ignore them. Instead, you should make sure that you promptly respond to any comments they may be telling you about. You can find social media management services that can work on these if you are too busy to do this. Train them on how you would like them to handle such situations. Ensure that you also inform them of how solutions should be given to any problem provided. Apologies work as well. Handle your online reputation well, and you will get a lot of new customers and have them become loyal followers of your brand.

The Tools That Help You With Social Media Customer Service

The Philippine contact center industry is well-versed in services like this. It may be pretty young, only several years old, but it definitely is at the tip of its toes and is constantly updated on the industry and what it can do to be competitive. Employing the help of companies that offer such services in the Philippines would mean you would have more time to do other, more important stuff regarding your business. Plus, you can be assured that your social media accounts and online reputation will be monitored. This is because the Philippine BPO industry has identified some tools to help them achieve this goal and do the task well.

Knowing what is happening to your brand on your social media accounts is one thing – knowing what other people are saying on the internet is another. Remember that your customers can vent out and talk about your brand or business anywhere online. It is also essential to remember that though you may have social media accounts, these consumers can still go to other sites and talk about you there.

A Philippine contact center can help you manage and monitor your online reputation, as their agents have been adequately trained to handle that situation. They have also been introduced to keep clients’ names out of the mud. Learning just what people are saying about you is a good thing. You can have a team of highly skilled agents take note of what people say about your brand or business. This should help you create a good strategy for what you should do.

The Philippines’ contact center industry makes use of tools to monitor what people are saying. They usually use free online tools, including Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, and Talkwalker. Of course, these are just a few of the tools traditionally used. There are other paid tools like SparkCentral, Freshdesk, and Zendesk that they also utilize to find out anything said about their clients.

Is There A Need To Respond To All Comments?

It does not necessarily mean that once you employ customer service using social media, you should go ahead and respond to all comments and posts about your product. If you would notice, the vast corporations that operate this way of helping their consumers do not respond to every position on the internet. There are a lot of consumers out there who like to get their voices heard but do not want to be recognized for saying such. Most of the time, people want to be anonymous when they say stuff about the brands that they use or follow. Unless it is a complaint or problem that needs a solution, it should be good to respond to that person.

The BPO industry in the Philippines has been handling a lot of companies and businesses, and they have been given instructions on which ones to respond to and which ones to take note of simply. There are several reasons for doing so. See, if you respond to the tons and tons of comments out there, it would mean spending a lot of time on that. This is one of the top reasons why. Another one is that there are still consumers out there who feel like brands are spying on them or learning about how they consume products in the market, which can be pretty invasive.

The whole thing can be tricky, and you can ask Magellan Solutions Inc., as they have been handling cases like this for several years already. Some people want to vent their anger, while others want to be noticed. Agents would have to be trained well on how to do so because they would only have to understand what the customer is saying by what they wrote. Unlike talking to a person, all the clues would have to be found through the person’s words. Some people may only respond to what a previous customer has posted and not necessarily a message to the company.

It is best to respond only when you feel there is a need. Skimming through the whole thread of comments may not do the trick. The entire task means reading through every word and deciding which messages are sent to the company or simply suggestions or replies to previous posts. Learning how to respond to these messages well is also quite best. Responding is one thing, but it is essential that the response would have something of value and not just a canned response.

Nowadays, people know canned responses from real deals, so be very careful about that.

Social media customer service is still in its infancy, so many things have to be discovered and learned about it. However, it does not mean that you should not jump in and use it for your brand. It may still be in its infancy, but it is increasing, so it is best to latch on to it as soon as possible.