Leveraging Social Media to Enhance Customer Service

Transparency: Yes, the mere mention of transparency in some brands' social media customer service causes accelerated breathing and sweaty palms. But this is exactly what consumers and buyers want in their partner's and brands' social media customer service. They don't expect you to be perfect, but they expect you to tell it like it is. Accept your social media customer service weaknesses, admit to your faults, and say you're sorry when you do something wrong. Do that in real-time (have the courage to do so!) and not only will your current social media customer service customers be more loyal to you, but you'll be surprised how quickly transparency will convert the cautious and skeptical to your side.

Credibility: By exposing yourself to the good, bad, and ugly of the marketplace, you make everything else you do more sincere and credible. By enabling and embracing transparency, your social media customer service by definition creates credibility for yourself and your brand. Even those who still don't completely accept you, or prefer your competitor's social media customer service, can't help but admire your position and openness. And credibility (a close cousin of trust) is the foundation of any strong, long-term social media customer service relationship.

Humanity: Guess what? Behind every strong company, every brand, and every building - are people. Real people build the product, provide the service, and innovate what you see today into the products, social media customer service, and solutions of tomorrow. Show the humanity of the people behind your brand through your social media customer service outlets - directly in front of and in exchanges with your customers - and they'll be attracted to you all the more. 

Community: Perhaps the best part of social media customer service's opportunity for customer service is that we're no longer talking to our customers. Every interaction is an opportunity to not only facilitate a two-way conversation with social media customer service but open that conversation to other customers to foster and enhance the feeling of community. Combine transparency and humanity with community, and the bonds of social media customer service get stronger.

24-7 Monitoring: You have to watch, all the time. If something blows up on a Friday night, it's not OK to wait to respond until Monday morning. This mentality worked when communication was both interruptive and one-way, and when the call center shut down in the evening hours. But social media customer service doesn't work that way. Your customers (and detractors) will talk whenever they feel like it. Your social media customer service (and your team, and your fans) need to pay closer and wider attention to what's going on and what's being said so you can address, correct and/or amplify messages as appropriate.

Fast Response Time: Even if you're just saying "let me check & I'll get back to you", respond quickly. Don't let open-ended questions and opinions in social media customer service hang out there without a response.

Customers Helping Customers: You (and your team) don't need to be the only respondent when someone asks a question. Your customers can help each other as well. Give customers access to your social media customer service channels, and encourage them to self-support each other with answers, best practices, usage tips and more.

Empower Customers as Community Leaders: If you know who your most active, supportive customers are, why not "promote" them to community leaders? Give them a discount or special consideration for your product, service, or brand in exchange for actively participating in social media customer service forums on your behalf. Customers helping customers will always work more credibly than brands helping customers, plus it takes more of the load off of your shoulders (particularly important for resource-constricted companies) via social media customer service.

Throw a Party for New Customers: Do your new customers feel welcome, or are they intimidated by their lack of experience and knowledge? Make them feel welcome in your social media customer service community. Invite them to introduce themselves, and share a story (or two) about what they're doing and how they're using what you're selling. This sharing alone will make them feel a part of the community, will immediately help you (and your community leaders) understand how social media customer service might be able to help, and will increase their likelihood to come back to you first if they have questions, concerns or complaints.

Allow the Community to Save Those Who Want To Leave: There will always be those who want to leave. For whatever their reason, they're ready to move to another product or service. Many companies have a "save team" of individuals focused on talking those customers into staying. But what if your loyal social media customer service customers had that job? Wouldn't they more credibly be able to ascertain what the problem is, suggest alternative solutions, and convert a higher percentage of those potential social media customer service defectors back into the fold?

Publicize Availability in All Channels: Do your customers know where your social media customer service communities are? Do they know how to find you at 1:00 in the morning? How are you helping brand new customers discover these channels & resources? The more customers discover and engage in these social media customer service opportunities, the more likely they'll engage with the community and accelerate their satisfaction and loyalty (not to mention decrease the cost of your more traditional, resource-intensive customer service options with social media customer service).

It's Not Just About Twitter!: Know your customers, and know which social media customer service channels they're more likely to engage with. Twitter is valuable, sure, but so are Facebook, LinkedIn, discussion forums, wikis, blogs, and more. Find out where your social media customer service customers are more likely to engage, and put your focus there (at least initially).

Social Media Customer Service is the New Marketing: Let's face it, if you successfully implement social media customer service, your customer service organization will be engaged with your customer more often and more frequently than traditional marketing channels. Doesn't that mean social media customer service is now as if not more important to shaping customer perceptions, brand preferences, and purchase activity? If you started your organization from scratch, I bet social media customer service and marketing would be the same thing, and in the same organization. Treat it that way now and things work better, more smoothly, and more successfully.

Keep Legal Out Of It: Tell them what you're doing, but keep them out of the day-to-day. Don't let them edit your Facebook account, your Tweets, or your back-and-forth. They don't review every conversation and email from your social media customer service organization today, so why would social media channels be any different?

Executive Support is Key: They don't need to be involved every day (although their active presence in your social media customer service channels can accelerate credibility & humanity), but your executive team needs to strongly and publicly endorse what you're doing. Many others are likely to want to slow down or limit how transparent and pervasive social media customer service channels are executed in your customer service plan. Active executive sponsorship can nip that in the bud, quickly.

Choose & Train Participants: Don't assume everyone in your social media customer service organization will know how to best engage customers in these open channels. Don't go overboard with rules and brand restrictions, but give participants some training, guidelines, and even some role-playing to show what's expected and what's possible in social media customer service.

Reward Engagement & Behavior: This applies both to your internal staff as well as your loyal customers. Encourage, recognize and reward positive interactions, speedy responses to issues, and success stories where your newly-leverage social media customer service channels have won over a skeptic saved a fading customer or created a new brand loyalist for life.