Social media customer service: How to do it right in 2024
As customers continue to spend cautiously in the wake of post-COVID inflation, competition for their dollars is rising. But cost isn’t the main deciding factor if someone will buy from you. 80% of people say the experience a brand offers is just as important as their products or services.
Your customer service on social media helps shape that experience with your organization.
Learn what people expect in customer service in 2024, tools to make social media customer service easier than ever before, and tips to make sure you’re delivering a winning customer service experience on social—every time.
Key Takeaways
* Today’s customers expect quick, seamless service on social media; 81% want faster responses, and 80% say a brand’s experience is just as important as its product.
* Businesses that respond quickly (ideally within 15 minutes) and engage consistently on social media are better equipped to build trust and create lasting relationships with their audiences.
* AI chatbots, social listening tools, and a social inbox can help you automate simple tasks, respond faster, and understand how customers feel about your brand — making it easier to provide exceptional social media customer service.
What is social media customer service?
Social media customer service is offering support or service to your customers through social networks, such as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, or any other platform. It includes answering customer support questions in public social media post comments or discussing via private message.
Why is social media customer service so important?
It’s what people want
Almost a third of customers (28%) say they give up solving a problem if they can’t find the answer online by themselves. That number surges to 38% for Millennials and 39% of Gen Zers.
Of the ones who wouldn’t give up right away, an average of 26.5% across generations say they’d give up if they had to wait on hold to talk to someone.
Source: Gartner
By using social media on your customer service team, you can respond instantly with tools like AI chatbots to keep these quick-moving customers engaged and solve their problems. (More on setting up chatbots and other tools later in the article.)
It builds customer relationships
In our Social Media Consumer Trends 2024 research, over half (53%) of people say the most appealing thing a brand can do on social media channels is quickly respond to direct questions and comments.
Prioritizing speedy and effective service builds trust with potential and existing customers. It can even help turn angry customers into loyal brand fans, too.
Source: Salesforce
It enhances brand awareness
Social media is by far the best bucket to spend your marketing dollars on. For B2B brands, social media is responsible for more customer acquisition than any other channel, including digital ads and email marketing.
Source: MarketingCharts / Stirista
When you respond to public comments from a customer service perspective, not only are you answering the question, but you’re also showcasing your expertise and personality to everyone who visits your public page.
Responding to comments also helps boost engagement, which can enhance your organic social post performance in various algorithms—especially on Instagram, where the more someone has interacted with you in the past, the more they’ll see your new posts.
How to provide great customer service on social media: 10 tips
Where should you focus your social media customer service efforts? How can you optimize your social media for customer service? How do you know if your customer service strategy is working?
Answers to these and more tips to succeed with social media customer service below.
1. Respond quickly
77% of customers expect an immediate response when they contact a company. Eeek.
Worried about keeping up? You’re not alone: 53% of social media marketers are feeling overwhelmed managing so many platforms. If you don’t have 10 hands and 20 thumbs to reply to comments and DMs manually all day, Hootsuite Inbox is here to help.
Hootsuite Inbox bridges the gap between engagement and customer service by allowing you to reply to comments and direct messages across all your social media platforms together in one place, right inside your Hootsuite dashboard.
More than only speeding up replies, your entire team can use Hootsuite Inbox to triage and assign conversations, set up alerts for messages that need answering right away, and see CSAT surveys alongside your other social media metrics in Hootsuite Analytics, so you can tell if your customer service is working.
Use Hootsuite Inbox’s generative AI chatbot to instantly answer FAQs like, “What are your business hours?” or, “Do you have free shipping?” which can reduce your team’s message volume up to 80%.
Plus, chatbots work 24/7, so you can actually turn your phone off while you sleep. (It’ll be okay, we promise.)
Hootsuite Inbox has everything you need to make cross-platform replies and cross-team collaboration easy, fast, and delightful for your customers.
Reduce response time (and your workload)
http://dlvr.it/TCwpQk
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