Serving Customers Using Social Media

Serving Customers Using Social Media
Instructor: Leslie O’Flahavan
Released: 4/5/2024	Course Details 1h6m Intermediate
Skills Covered Social Media Communications Customer Service		Course Link
Professional Certifications and Continuing Education Units (CEUs) N/A
Using social media to serve customers is an artform. When you reply to one customer, thousands can read your response. Every word can be shared with the world, so you’ve got to get every word right. This course prepares you to serve customers in high-stakes channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Join instructor Leslie O’Flahavan as she explains how to respond quickly, move from public to private channels, and write in an authentic but professional tone that blends your company’s templated responses with your own personal touch. Examine real-world tweets, Facebook posts, ratings, and reviews to see what happens when skillful customer service reps talk down angry customers and even trolls. Leslie also provides writing tips to keep your grammar and punctuation professional and shows you how to use cutting-edge generative AI tools to help you understand customers’ posts and draft brief replies quickly. Source: LinkedIN Learning

Delivering Efficient Customer Service on Social Media

Respond quickly to customer inquiries on social

Customers on social want a quick response.

A study asked customers “How quickly do you expect a response from brands on social media?”

30% expected responses on the same day
23% expected responses in one or two hours
16% expected responses in minutes

Facebook has a “Very Responsive to Messages” badge which is earned when companies provide a 90% response rate and when the response time is less than 15 minutes consistently over 7 days.

Quick response hand-out available with 7 tips for faster responses.

Pivot channels gracefully in social customer service

Channel Pivot
Asking customers to move a discussion from one channel to another.

Social Media -> Telephone
Instagram -> Email

A channel pivot costs the customers a little bit of energy.

Answer one customer and help many more

Upside/Downside of Social Media
The downside is customers can gang up on you. The upside is you can help many customers at once.

Answer One; Help Many

Offer self-service on website.
Recommend a product.
Write clear, simple how-tos.

Crafting Personalized, On-Brand Customer Service Responses

Adopt an informal yet professional tone in your writing

“Nice blue jeans” tone rather than formal “three piece suit” tone.

Use the “would I say that to a customer on the phone?” standard.

Include emojis and GIFs in your customer service responses

Tips for Using Emojis

Don’t use an emoji in place of a word.
Be consistent with your brand.
Use to deepen the feeling of your words.
Mirror customers’ use.

Identify writing rules you can break in social media

Don’t break rules if it makes your writing hard to read.

Rules You Can Break

Ending sentence with a period.
Proper sentence structure.

Rules You Can NOT Break

Capitalize first letter.
Use proper capitalization.
Use apostrophes correctly.
Ensure correct spelling.

Demonstrate empathy in your responses to customers

Sympathy
Feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for others.

Empathy
Imagining yourself in someone else’s situation.

Personalize responses to customers with key details

Look for personal details the customer shared. Incorporate these details in your reply so the customer does not think you are bot replying to them.

Look for neutral details – not referring to the customers complaint and look for goals and desired outcomes.

Using Templates for Efficient Responses to Your Customers

Determine when to use templates versus customized responses

Use a Template

Urgent issues
Detailed, repeated info

Free Texting – customized, unscripted writing

Write templates that are easy to customize

Use customizable templates.

Create Customizable Templates

Use brackets to indicate free text.
Write variations for each.

Handling Angry Customers on Social Media

Defuse angry customers skillfully

Use vague, empathetic wording.
Thank them for sharing.
Ask a clarifying question.

Determine when not to engage with angry customers on social

Know your company’s social-media customer use policy.
Determine if the person is a customer.
Ignore them.

Reasons to Ignore Trolls

Customers will defend you.
Responding is pointless.

Apologize authentically to angry customers

What are the words that make customers angry… “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”

The first strategy to clean this tired cliche is to eliminate the word “any” and replace it with “the”.

“We regret the inconvenience this may have caused.” – the word any sounds doubtful.

Second, remove the words “may have”.

“We regret the inconvenience this caused.” – the words may have indicates it “may not” have happened.

Lastly, remove the word “inconvenience” and try a different set like:

we regret the hassle
we regret the disappointment
we regret the frustration
we regret the aggravation

Responding To Ratings and Reviews

Respond to low ratings and poor reviews

Poor reviews are not just talking about you. They’re talking to you.

Responding to Bad Reviews

Acknowledge and apologize.
Solve the problem.
Make it personal (not generic).
- Practical
- Positive
- Helpful

Offer solutions, share resources, and suggest products

When responding to customer ratings and reviews, it’s important to suggest solutions, resources and suggest products just like you would do when helping the customer on the phone.

Leveraging Generative AI Tools in Responding to Customers on Social

Use Gen AI to analyze customer posts

Info for ChatGPT

Who you are or what you sell
Type of social media
Customer’s post in quotations
Specific instructions

This can be used to ask ChatGPT to interpret the customers post (if the post is unclear) and even ask it to generate a response, which you would need to review and edit.