Learn your tools
My father, and in fact my entire family, are tradespeople. I’m the oddball in the family, in that I work with a computer everyday but what I’ve learnt from them is that knowing your tools is critical, and picking the right tool for the job is even more important. Learn which social medias are best for your business.
Invest in technology
Are you looking for an excuse to buy a new smartphone? Now’s your chance because if you’re going to focus on your customers, you’ll need to be able to help them when they need help. Most social platforms have applications for the leading phones, be sure to download them and keep your customer service team on top of problems before they get out of hand.
A good mobile phone, connected to your social media can help customer support agents solve your customer problems regardless of where, or when the problems occur.
Solve problems quickly
In my experience, almost every angry customer can be turned into a happy customer with quick, deceive action. Empower your social media team (agency, person etc) to be capable of solving customer problems quickly, with a single reply.
Remember social media isn’t restricted to a single person, or even a team in your company. Your entire company should be part of your social media solution. Train every member from the receptionist to the VP of Engineering on how to help customers find what they’re looking for.
Know your market
Ensure your social team knows your hours of operation, locations, closures etc. and be sure they know local issues! For example, here in Niagara Canada we’re the same distance from Hamilton and Toronto, but only half the distance to Buffalo, New York. Generally, when we seek help from corporate support staff, they’ll try sending us to Buffalo (a different country) or Toronto (on the other side of a lake).
Separate marketing and customer support
While both focus on the customer, the role of the customer support team is very different from that of the marketing team. Ensure your accounts are setup to manage both tasks separately as well by having both a marketing handle and a direct customer support account.
Curate your problems, as well as their solutions
Once a solution has been found to a problem, learn from it and try to avoid it in the future. Customers rarely take to social media to complain lightly, so determine why the went there, look at the lack of information that frustrated them, and solve the problem in the future.
It’s also a great idea to write FAQ’s on your website from enquires on your social media. These questions and answers help identify problems you haven’t already solved and add to your indexed content on Google.