Improve Your Customer Service Using Social Media

You might not think that social media interactions would have a big impact on your business, but that is simply not true. Social media can really have the power to make or break your business, as was borne out by a recent study. In this study, 50% of the consumers who were polled said that they expected a response from a business within one hour. The 50% number was obtained from Twitter consumers, but similar results were obtained by polling Facebook consumers, 42% of whom also expected a response within one hour.This should tell you something about the expectations of customers, and what you need to be doing in order to keep them satisfied. Those companies which can quickly respond to messages or reviews posted by consumers are the ones which most often become customer favorites, and which inspire prolonged loyalty. Here are some tips on how you can use social media to improve your own customer service, so that your business has a chance to enjoy that same kind of loyalty and customer retention.

Respond promptly

Whenever you receive some kind of communication from a customer, it becomes extremely critical to address their concerns or their questions in the promptest manner possible. Many customers these days are making use of Facebook Messenger in order to contact businesses with their concerns. This makes it important for your business to make use of Facebook Messenger chatbots, so that you can quickly respond to these communications.It becomes even more important to make use of these chatbots if you have a large volume of customers, and typically experience a high volume of communications. It would be a good idea to set up some question and answer triggers, so that your chatbots can quickly answer the most commonly asked queries. You can do this for a number of the most frequently asked questions, such as what your operating hours are or where your location is, but just be sure to make the most effective use of chatbots to promptly answer questions.

Always respond respectfully

If you own your own business, you really aren't at liberty to always say what you are really thinking, and you're much better off to keep your cool, even under the most stressful situations. Even if you read a review which is totally unfair and untrue, you should respond promptly and in an even-tempered manner that doesn't further antagonize a customer or anyone else reading it.If you attempt to fight back against an unfair review, you're in a no-win situation, and that is likely to do much more harm than good. The best way to approach reviews is to consider every one of them an opportunity to showcase the good side of your business. Use language which is soothing and acceptable to customers, and always emphasize the positive rather than the negative.

Be friendly and helpful

Anytime you interact with a customer online, make sure your tone is warm, welcoming, and helpful. It's fine to be business-like with all your colleagues and your employees, but customers are different animals, and you need to impress them with the fact that you're there to make their day a little better. If you adopt a stuffy approach and use language which comes across as stiff and company-oriented, you'll lose any advantage that you might have gained by responding.The whole point of you responding to customer reviews and communications is to be warm and personal, so that the user feels like you are genuinely concerned with their issues, and want to do everything possible to solve them. You should extend this same approach to the way you set up your chatbots in Facebook Messenger. Any scripts that you prepare for your chatbots should have the same friendly and warm tone, so that consumers are reassured.Try to make these scripts as human-sounding as possible, so that your customers aren't put off by a mechanical-sounding robot. This is another thing that could work against you if you don't do it right, so make sure that your chatbots all sound soothing and helpful, rather than mechanical and cold. You will earn a lot more customers by adopting this friendly and warm tone, because others will read it and be impressed by your personal touch.

Create a Facebook group

It can be a huge advantage to your business if you can build an online Facebook community which is more or less centered around your company. Be aware that this is a fine line to walk, because you'll want to maintain a very personal attitude in this group, but at the same time you also want to center it around your business. If you have just the right touch in carrying this out, the benefits can be tremendous, because you'll have an instant hotline connection to your customers and their points of view.Having this kind of feedback can be priceless to a business, because it can help you make little tweaks and adjustments which are pointed out by your faithful customers. If anything is really wrong with your business, they will let you know, and you can make it better by following through on some of their recommendations. This can turn out to be a tremendous forum for discussion, opinion-sharing and for asking questions about any of your products or services.If the group grows to the point where you have a significant number of participants, you may need to install moderators to ensure that the group operates smoothly, and so that your interests are best represented. One thing to be aware of when choosing whether to make the group public or private is that you should look out for the possibility of bots joining your group. You can prevent this by having all new members answer relevant questions which bots will be unable to deal with. If you set this up right and get a good Facebook community established, it can be your direct pipeline to customers, and that can be solid gold for your business.