Social Media as Customer Service
The Best Reason For Your Brand To Be On Social Media
Your brand is on social media, but why? It’s not just to garner Likes and Follows. And it’s not just to blast out one-sided messages through the megaphone that is Twitter. Expanding your reach and raising brand awareness is a lofty goal, but that’s not the whole kit and kaboodle, either.
So, let’s cut to the chase: the most important reason your brand should be on social media is to conduct and improve your customer service.
But I Use A Call Center
You may already have customer service, uh, services in place. That doesn’t mean you can’t look to social as either a replacement for or complement to your existing efforts.
There are a ton of pros to using social media as your customer service outlet. For starters, there’s no additional cost for software, hardware or other systems-related expenses. It’s all online on existing platforms, giving you unlimited flexibility. Your business can reach out to customers, solve their problems, provide feedback or simply say “thanks” to fan mail at anytime from anywhere.
If your old brick-and-mortar approach to customer service is cutting it, or is proving more trouble than it’s worth, there are huge potential savings to be had from transitioning to a digitally driven social media customer service experience.
But I Don’t Have The Staff
Customer service is a crucial, but often time-consuming, task, and no one feels the crunch more than small businesses. The great thing about using social media as customer service is that you probably already have a presence in these spaces. Just dedicating a few minutes a day to checking in on messages and comments from customers can go a long way.
If your budget allows, there are services (like ConverSocial) that staff already-trained, ready-to-please customer service experts that can help you monitor and respond to customer requests and issues.
But It’s Not In My Budget
It costs more to make a new customer than to keep an existing one. And, again, social media is free for businesses to use.