Managing social media is like coaching a football team. The Offense makes plays. They create communities, pages, and campaigns that excite fans and increase the fan-base. The Defense keeps bad things from happening. They monitor online posts and respond when they can solve problems, spread helpful information, and correct mistakes.
Here are five ways the most customer service savvy companies are not just improving their Defense, but turning Defense into point-scoring Offense.
Big brands get more online mentions than a company can – or should – respond to. Decision trees are developed to identify which postings deserve a response, what responses should be made, and what problems should be escalated. The Defense assuages complainers and douses flamers before bad experiences go viral. No new news here.
While nipping problems in the bud is crucial, social media, at its best, is comprised of community members who interact. They advise each other. They solve problems. The savviest companies acknowledge that contribution and put community-provided solutions into their knowledgebase. They state their thanks publicly, frequently, and tangibly (with freebies, coupons or something more exciting) when possible.
We've all heard that a happy customer tells two people and an unhappy customer tells ten. We've heard the modernized version where angry online customer tells thousands.
The reality, however, is that an angry post in a major forum or popular blog is more dangerous than a snippy twit with 11 followers. While many companies embrace the mantra that every unhappy customer is important, some posts are simply more volatile than others. That's why the most customer service savvy companies put technology and people resources into identifying influencers.
A good customer service phone call is the result of extensive training and an ever-improving knowledgebase. Calls are evaluated and scored -- often. Good agents are rewarded. Less-than-stellar agents get training. As every customer service professional knows, there's more to a call than meets the ear.
Perhaps because social media posts are spontaneous and/or short, the people who monitor social media don't generally receive the preparatory training that call center agents do.
The savviest companies, on the other hand, treat social media as another channel of customer service, that's surely best customer service practices. Their "agents" are trained to deliver messages that are consistent with the brand and have easy access to details about products and promotions.
Social media is 24/7/ 365, but the realities of staffing may dictate that social media responses are made during business hours. To get more about these channels, we could use customer service omnichannel software to put customers first lining up with A.I bots, that work for most of the customer concerns, and transfer contacts to other agents for better help and support.
When a near-instant response isn't an option, the most customer service savvy companies have trained their Defense to acknowledge the company's delayed reply– and apologize if too much time has passed. A courteous, "Just saw your post from last night and wanted to get right back to you," can go a long way towards remediating a customer's sense of having posted into nothingness.
Call center agents have many clues about a caller – from tone of voice to data on their previous inquiries. Social media agents may have as little as 140 characters or an anonymous screen name like BadAssJeff. Not to mention that some millennials have an online vocabulary that isn't second nature to people who are, uh, a bit older.
Just as the best call center agents are taught to project a helpful tone of voice, the most customer service savvy companies also monitor the language, abbreviations, and "style" of their Defense. They develop the best practices for tweets that are often different from the best practices of forum posts, blog comments, or fan page postings.