Social customer service seems to be an essential part of customer experience management today. You may have heard multiple times, that you have to monitor social media regularly, and respond to the issues quickly. When customers complain on Facebook or Twitter, the whole world knows about the issues. If you do nor react on time, complaints will ruin your reputation.
To save reputation of your business on social media, you might decide that you need social customer service. And include social media to your regular support channels. What if you are wrong?
First of all, you should analyze, why your clients use social media for contacting you at all. It’s good news when they interact with your social posts and join conversations. But why would they complain there? This may indicate, that there is something wrong with your support channels.
The main support channels are telephone, email and secure live chat solutions. Each channel has its pros and cons, but all together they prove to be very effective. Telephone is the oldest and the most popular support channel. It allows real-time communication and fast problem solving. Technical issues are better solved via emails, because emails allow transferring screenshots, files and proper description of a problem. Emails also allow service staff take time for investigation and come up with a solution when it is found.
Live chat combines the pros of telephone and email to become the third main support channel, and probably the most popular in the nearest future. Live chat allows instant replies, fast problem solving, screenshot and file transfer, easy access to the history, and much more. Secure Live chat solutions allows something that neither telephone nor email are able to provide. First of all it is proactive communication. Thanks to real-time traffic monitoring, chat operators can view who is browsing the website, where they came from, what they are looking for, and what sort of help they may need. Operators are able to invite website visitors to chat during their purchase process and close the sale, or provide support services and deliver great customer experience. Automation makes this process even easier.
So why would customers need to leave your website and make an extra step to complain via social media? The top three support channels cover all customer needs. Telephone for a quick talk, email for a thoughtful discussion, live chat for those who prefer typing. When customers want to resolve an issue, they would definitely use one of the three channels.
If your customers complain via social media, they must be very disappointed with your services. They want to draw your attention via social media, because you might have been ignoring them, you might have had them wait on hold for too long or you have not replied to emails properly. When they complain via social media, you must have failed to resolve an issue in a timely manner or the customer has not received the expected result. Complaining via social media means high level of frustration and lost expectations. It is a good sign that you need to take care of your customer service channels. Now.
While the top three social customer service channels work smoothly, you will not need social media support. If you don’t annoy your customers, they won’t complain via social media.
