By Adam

Social Media positively influences sales and improves brand loyalty and connections to a large extent. It plays a significant role in customer support service. From a business perspective, it saves a lot of time and money.

Additionally, social media platforms allow you to reach a much wider group of customers than traditional methods.

As per Statista, 4.41 billion people will use social media by 2025. It is an excellent channel for customer care as it is so immediate and accessible.

76% of people who message a business on a social media platform do so for customer service or support.

The mutual benefits of easy brand accessibility via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube allow easy customer contact and engaging social interaction. Around 47% of US consumers have a favorable view of a brand that responds to customer service questions on social media.

Here is a list of the top five ways to use social media to extend customer support:

1- Consider Setting up a Dedicated Social Handle for Social Media Customer Support

The Marketing Land says that failing to respond can lead to a 43% decrease in customer advocacy, while a reply can increase it by 20%.

A brand needs to use a separate social account specifically dedicated to customer support.

For example, Hootsuite uses @Hootsuite_Help, and BestBuy uses @BestBuySupport as a customer support platform on social media.

Using a separate social account will help you filter out and flag any support and service issue from your primary channel.

As per Convince and Convert, around 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes.

Also, failure to respond on social channels leads to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers.

A dedicated social media account for customer support also enables you to address customer support questions faster and in detail. A fast and detailed response that resolves issues helps you to satisfy and retain frustrated customers.

Also, include a link to your main account to increase the reach of your dedicated social handle for social media customer support.

2- Incorporate Social Listening into Your Strategy

Increased customer expectation for rapid response customer support through social media channels has made the social listening solution a necessity for customer support and community management in 2021.

As per Socialbakers, 51% of brands utilize social listening in any capacity.

Social listening involves monitoring social conversations around various topics. It allows you to understand why, where, and how these conversations are happening and what people think and feel. It also helps you understand what is important to your audience and identify trends that your target audience is following.

Here is an example, when Best Buy did not receive a direct @ mention on Twitter by the customer.

But incorporating social listening helped Best Buy to respond with a helpful message, suggesting a product …read more

Source:: Social Media Explorer

Author: Aaron