Since the start of the social media marketing revolution, customer service has been real-time. People are likelier to tweet a question or post a complaint on Facebook before picking up the phone. Seriously, when was the last time you talked to a live person when calling customer service or tech support? At least within the first few minutes. It’s up to businesses to monitor their social media – either their brand, user name, or hashtag.
Be Where Your Customers Are
People spend a lot of time on social media. If they come across your business profile on a social network, they’re more than likely — if they have a question — to ask it right then and there.
They’re not going to go look for your website link, then search for your contact page, or find your email address to send you a message. No, they’re going to message you from the network. Furthermore, if you wait too long to respond, they’ll go elsewhere and the network may ding you for a slow response rate — Facebook does that. On Facebook, you can earn a badge for a quick response rate. They even say on pages, “Responds within x number of hours.” HOURS not days.
Now, people will understand if it’s a weekend that you probably won’t respond until normal business hours, however, if you happen to get a message on the weekend, it will impress them if you do respond even if it’s just “Hi, I got your message. I’ll respond when I get to the office.” Or “Thanks for your inquiry. I’ll get back to you on Monday.”
If you’re not monitoring your social media DAILY, you may lose a customer!
If you’re going to be on social media, you have to be social! What if you can’t be on the networks daily to monitor them? Then, set up email notifications in the settings to get an email when someone comments or sends a message. That way, you won’t miss a crucial question that can land you a new customer or a returning one.
For Example…
One of my clients once had someone interested in one of their events and asked if they had mentoring on a specific topic. I responded for my client with, “Thank you for your interest! Yes, please visit our website… to schedule a free mentoring session and you can specifically ask for… who specializes in this.”
You can set up generic, automated responses, but had I not seen what topic this person was interested in, I wouldn’t have been able to respond with exactly what she needed. Furthermore, the human touch is always better than a robot! Yes, AI has improved and is evolving. However, it’s still a computer.
Likewise, another client had a booking system on his website that wasn’t working right. A potential client messaged them on Facebook instead of using their website contact form. I guess they figured if the booking system wasn’t working, neither was the contact form.
If you don’t respond to questions within a reasonable time, you may lose business!
Customer service and social media go hand-in-hand.
Here’s a classic video by Jay Baer, of Convince and Convert and author of “YouTility”:
If your social media pages are not monitored properly, a customer service request can go unnoticed for days. That’s bad. You must monitor activity daily on your social pages. Respond in a timely and appropriate manner to customer service inquiries, issues, and complaints. Moreover, you need to diffuse the bad and highlight the good. Use a tool like Sendible to not only monitor your social media but also schedule posts and get great analytics.
You can monitor and manage our social media in 30 minutes a day! I can show you how.
Let’s start with a free 15-minute Zoom call. Click here to schedule!
Related: What does your online image say about you?
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