With social being the service channel of choice for 83% of consumers (Accenture), we thought we’d share 5 of our favourite lessons learned from working alongside leaders in the space.
1. Understand the context behind every conversation
Ever met a person who can’t remember your name, or how you met, or who you are? Even though you’ve been having a back and forth for days, weeks, or even months?
Now, imagine this awkward encounter taking place between a customer and a brand, on a very public forum: social media.
Melita Amore from SEEK, says acknowledging a brand’s shared history with someone is crucial, as 73% of people say valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service (Forrester).
“Getting the context right means you can respond in a personalised way, and shows you’ve taken the time and thought about that individual and their needs,” she says.
“It demonstrates we care about that individual’s ongoing journey and adds another layer of authenticity to that engagement.”
2. Master a human tone of voice
It’s important to maintain a cohesive brand voice across all channels, and it’s also key to ensure this manifests as a human talking to another human, not in corporate speak. Keep in mind that in the U.S., the estimated cost of customers switching brands due to poor service is $1.6 trillion (Accenture).
One of the best ways to master a human tone of voice is by creating a ‘fake human character’ for the team to use when responding to requests. This person should manifest the qualities outlined in your brand’s blueprint and have a very distinctly human voice and personality.
Teach the team to mimic your character’s qualities and a cohesive, human voice will begin to inflect each and every response.
3. Cut down response times and pay attention to the individual
Today 42% of customers expect a response within one hour. With recent research finding Airline customers will pay $2.33 USD more for good social service, we believe delivering rapid social customer care directly affects the bottom line as this figure skyrockets to an extra $19.83 USD if a response is provided within 6 minutes.
Our clients have improved their response time by bringing queries from all networks into a single inbox updated in real-time.
Using this frontline inbox, they’re rapidly tagging and triaging each query to the right agent for the job, so teams can spend less time sifting through the inbox, and more time crafting a great response.
4. Move with your audience
As a leader in a Social Customer Care team, it can be really challenging to know where to focus time and resources. Do you respond to every single comment? Or just customer service questions? What if the post comes from an influencer? Is there a 24/7 requirement?
Start by assessing volumes and response times at different parts of the day and night to ensure the right number of staff are on shift at the appropriate time. Then, monitor trends in content to get a global view of what your community are actually talking to you about.
You’ll learn more about the type of content that speaks to them, as well as the most common types of queries coming through each day and night.
Eventually, you’ll come to a judgement call on volume vs the capability of your current team. Considering most brands experience a spike in activity as the working day ends, there may be a need to resource around conventional working hours, especially if you’re leveraging this activity by posting at the end of the day.
The important thing is to move with your audience, and recognise that social never really sleeps.
5. Celebrate genuine engagement
Ticked all the boxes for social customer care? Report back on your success with powerful analytics and results.
Lexer Net Promoter Score (NPS) enables customer service agents to add a link to a custom NPS survey within the body of a private message on social.
Survey responses can be accessed within Lexer and tracked to individual customers, enabling brands to report on the team and individual performance and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Holly Clark is Marketing Coordinator at Lexer, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company helping companies put their data to work to genuinely understand and engage customers. Learn more at lexer.io
