Improve the Customer Experience on Social Media

Overview

Social media is more than a broadcasting tool to get the word out for your latest product. It is a platform where you connect with your customers to improve their experience with you. Often customers interact with you on social media long before they work with you. Therefore, it is crucial to give them a great first impression of your business from what you discuss on social media. Discover the strategies to improve your customers’ experience with your business on social media.

4 Steps to Improve Your Customer Experience on Social Media

1. Get the best people

Your social media strategy is only as good as the front-line people staffing your social channels. If you do not have faith in them, then they cannot believe in their ability to improve customer service on social media. This has as much to do with your team’s belief as it does with you choosing the correct team to improve customer service on your social channels. Be careful they have the right attitudes and skills needed for the job. The social media representatives for your company should have the ability to communicate your company’s message. Give them a process for reaching their goals. One company uses the L.E.A.R.N. (listen, empathize, apologize, respond, and now) process. Teams can use this process when handling complaints, feedback, or objections on social media.

2. Urgency

It is not surprising the last part of L.E.A.R.N. is now. More than any other medium in history, social media is immediate. We post something, and it is immediately available for the world to see. Comments and interactions happen in real-time. Consequently, you need a team able to quickly respond to any problem Facebook even tracks how long it takes for you to respond to a customer on Facebook messenger, because they know it is vital to your success.

This goes back to having the right team with the right process to effectively respond quickly. The more time you give an issue to fester, the more negativity you deal with customers. When you do respond, keep in mind three items. First, ask customers to contact you through an 800 number or contact form on your website if the issue requires discretion. Second, always stay polite. If a customer is mad, it is because their experience is not what they expected. Yelling or acting out against them despite your strongest desires to do so, do not help the situation. Third, avoid canned responses. No one wants a response fit for a computer. Make it personalised, so customers feel validated. 3. Remember the positive You always want to address complaints. However, you also need to respond to positive comments and feedback on social media. Remember, you use social media to improve your business. Therefore, spend as much time on the positives as you do the negatives. Positive customers become advocates for your business online. Therefore, following up with them is just as important as following up on the complaints or feedback. One strategy to help you do is to use your social channels to provide discount codes, giveaways, and other incentives.

4. Check the data 

Improving the customer experience requires more than answering individual posts. If you want to improve the customer experience, analyze your data from all of these interactions. Once you do, identify trends and common pain points. This could lead to new customers or more content about specific problems users have. One way to do this is through surveys. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have survey systems for you to ask customers what they think of various products and services.

Finally, you need to have the correct analytics for your business. When you gather all the data together, you can analyse it to find the best approach to improve your customer experience on social media.

Final Thoughts

 Social media marketing is not about perfection. However, customers want to know you did your best to improve their experience on social media. This show in everything you do from handling customer objections to working with customer advocates. Be a resource they can rely upon, and their faith in your services will grow. If you have any questions about how to improve this process, contact us at Shout for a free consultation session. We provide social media marketing services in Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane.