It is 2013. The way we play games, send mail, and consume information has changed. Many people say they have a “love/hate relationship” with technology, one of those “can’t live with, can’t live without” attitudes.  This perspective on technology doesn’t stop at household use. The way businesses are interacting with their customers has also begun to evolve thanks to the age of social media, and the relationship is heating up.

It’s a known fact that if a customer has a good experience with your company, the chance of loyalty greatly increases. Just the other day I got hungry (go figure) so I tried out MenuDrive and found a great site for a restaurant online ordering service! I was so pleased with my experience that I’m using MenuDrive again this weekend! When it comes down to it, more than half of your customers are on social media. And it is said that by the end of 2013, 80 percent of companies will use social media for customer service!

So how can you best optimize your company to capitalize on this relationship with your customer service department and a social media site? Well here are a few tips to get your started (or if you have started, to keep you in-the-know) so you are not fighting with social media.

1. Social Media Customer Service Is A Must

Especially for larger companies, responding to the customers on social media is not an option. You must do this. This is where many of the customers are and they want a quick answer. Social media is usually their preferred method of communicating with you. Some customers will not contact you any other way (like by phone, email, or fax).

2. Using The Right People

Having your social media medium is one thing. Having the right people working is like having heating services in the dead of winter! You can establish all the guidelines you’d like, but when it comes to social media, you gain most from showing personality and spunk. This is not like reading a phone script for telemarketers. The best people for social media are those who have a passion for the product or service they’re promoting. Knowledge also allows for quick answers.

3. Using The Right Tools

Once your company gets into social media, the volume of the messages and conversation can be a bit overwhelming. This is where the tools come into play. It’s normally not good enough to rely on your @mentions or Facebook notifications, due to the mass amounts of incoming traffic. It would help to properly configure a social media-monitoring tool to help with the amount of messages. With Facebook’s new Graph Search coming out, that also would be a great thing to learn.

4. The Line Is Drawn Between Customer Service and Marketing

Social media is something that both the company’s customer service and marketing departments can benefit from. Of course, for this benefit, the two departments must work together. Some marketing departments believe that social media is theirs and that they have the rights to promote their business with ads and coupons, which they can. But they also have to step aside sometimes to allow the customer service team to interact with the people who will be using those coupons and reading those ads. A good business will be able to balance these two aspects.

The relationship between customer service and social media is becoming tighter and they don’t want to leave each other’s side.  It is easier to think of them as siblings: the more you work at the relationship, the easier it will become. There will always be those arguments in the relationship that create difficulties for the company (or the parents), but they always seem to work it out in the end.

 

Photo Credit: Flickr user dellphotos