By Andrew Kokes, HGS
In a time when Millennials and Gen Z turn to social media more
than ever, these digitally native consumers expect brands to provide a
quick and seamless online experience. Social media platforms are constantly
evolving, and brands have to evolve along with them in order to stay relevant
to today’s consumer.
Some of the biggest retail brands receive more than 10
million social media mentions each year — and that number continues to grow
exponentially year-over-year. In reality, not all of these millions of mentions
require a response, so the challenge becomes: how do companies filter through
the noise to find the actionable posts and create epic social media customer
experiences?
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Whether a brand handles social media customer care in house
or enlists the help of a business process outsourcer for an end-to-end
solution, one thing remains the same: the social media customer care practices
to create epic customer experiences.
Use New Technology To
Cover All Aspects Of CX
To make sure the consumer is cared for at every step of the
customer experience, brands must bring together the right combination of people,
processes and technology. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation
(RPA) and analytics enable customer care agents to provide deeper, more
meaningful interactions with consumers by filtering out posts that don’t
require 1:1 interaction and prioritizing those that necessitate human empathy,
whether in problem resolution or creative wit in amplifying brand praise.
Address Customers Appropriately
Often, when
customers reach out to a brand, they want the experience of talking with their
neighborhood store and not a corporate entity. In these instances, it is
important to respond on a more personal level by catering language and style of
response. Empathy is one of the most important qualities for customer care
agents on social media, where users are highly skilled at spotting inauthenticity.
The biggest opportunities for growing brand affinity are moments of joy expressed
by consumers who don’t expect a response — qualified as “joy share.” When brands
prioritize responding to joy share they see increased engagement, loyalty and
ROI.
Respond Efficiently And Effectively
Quick and seamless customer care resolution can be the best
tool to enhance brand reputation, while creating more brand fans in the
process. With technology constantly advancing, it’s important for brands to
have a tactical plan in place to interact with clients on social in order to
provide epic social media customer care.
Brands today need to prioritize a detailed and thorough social
media handbook. Any and every potential situation that can arise on social
media should have a clear response and escalation process, from the mundane to
the overly positive or negative. The audience on social media is billions strong
and growing each day. If brands aren’t constantly caring for, evolving and
improving their social media experience, customers will quickly tire and take
their business elsewhere.
6 Steps To Epic
Social Customer Care
1. When engaging with a customer and resolving
customer complaints and inquiries, use empathy.
2. Inject personality into brand responses in a
friendly, witty and personable tone.
3. Create a guide for the social customer care team
that includes parameters for responding to complaints and concerns, as well as
appropriate language aligned to client corporate culture.
4. Identify opportunities to surprise and delight
customers, create memorable experiences and increase brand affinity.
5. Train the customer care team to identify
potential PR crises and develop escalation procedures in order to protect the
brand.
6. Conduct social analytics and extract insights to
inform business decisions.
Andrew Kokes is a
global marketing leader at HGS, CX
professional, product promoter and outsourcing innovation fan — with a focus on what’s next.
