Social media and the impact of providing good customer service

Assessing the impact of good social media customer service and exploring the potential rewards of a strong social media presence is golden to businesses. Social media has transformed the way we communicate, distribute information, and create content, and even context. Through the years since its inception, it has gradually become more and more influential in the way we reach out to each other. And at the same time, it completely upended the old ways of building good customer relationships as passive consumers of the past are now active participants in the product.

Naturally, as companies want to be where their customers are, they responded to this trend by pooling more and more resources into this new channel. After all, providing a good social media customer service is not an extra channel anymore. It is THE channel to build new connections and maintain relationships with customers.

Customer service is a spectator sport

For decades, customer service has been a one-to-one affair. The customer has a problem, the customer calls the customer service hotline or shows up to the store to see the manager, and hopefully, the problem gets resolved. However, this paradigm has shifted dramatically with the rise of social media. Now the customers take to social media to interact with the company publicly. It means everyone can search for and find the interaction and see how the company responds to the complaint.

What this means is, in the olden days, if the company didn’t provide a good service, that particular customer might be lost and he/she told a few friends and family. Now, however, every interaction is out in the open for everyone to see. In other words, how a business handles a single customer is now perceived as a predictor of how that business will handle future complaints down the line.

What are the key benefits of having strong social media customer service?

Having strong social media customer service requires effort and resources. But in the end, the rewards are immensely valuable for companies in the long run. There are substantial opportunities to be explored:

• Social media presence as a differentiator: how you handle each and every customer and complaint sets you apart from the competition. As everything is out in the open, you can leverage this as a marketing tool, when you act fast and act accordingly, your prospective customers will take notice of how you take care of your customers. And this will ultimately drive more business to your company.
• Retaining your existing users: Return business is always appreciated. To keep the customers coming back, helping them out or taking their feedback into account on social media is crucial. Almost every customer expects a stellar relationship with the company they do business with. And ensuring that they come back is increasingly becoming a social media affair. The omnichannel customer satisfaction approach to this is the surefire way to keep your customers happy.
• Prevent churn: In this ever-increasingly fast-paced world, customers don’t want to wait for hours for your response. To keep your customers, you need to be quick and informative at the same time. Never leave a question or complaint go unnoticed. Also, responding to them in a satisfactory manner should be your first priority, as it might be the deciding factor for customers to switch to a competitor.

Check out Desk360 today

If it all sounds too complicated and hard, don’t fret. There are social CRM solutions like Desk360, where you can tap into social media channels and turn every mention and DM into a support ticket and pass them on to an agent for a fast response. With Desk360, never miss an opportunity to engage with a customer, existing and prospective alike. Make your customers happy while keeping them on board with you. Check out Desk360 SCRM solutions today.