social customer care on the go

Social Customer Care On the Go5 MUST-HAVE MARKETING TOOLS & TACTICS

Once you solidify your social media presence, your fans, followers and customers don’t just want customer service, they expect proactive customer care. Much more than serving your customer to solve a single issue or get to the end of a sale, that “care” means being constantly available and accountable. For social teams on the front lines, it’s about building an ongoing (and sometimes 24/7) relationship that recognizes customers as both individuals and the backbone of your business.

That relationship doesn’t end when the o�ce lights go o�. In fact, according to HubShout, 57% of customers think that a brand’s customer service response time should be the same on the weekdays and weekends.1

Given this always-on nature of social customer care, your brand and the people who represent your business need to think and act di�erently. Using tools to engage with and respond to customers whenever and wherever you are (all while managing your own sanity) is essential. To help, we’ve outlined five must haves for any brand looking to provide exceptional social customer care.

1. http://hubshout.com/?Top-Strategies-for-Customer-Retention-[VIDEO-&-INFOGRAPHIC]&AID=1049

SOCIAL CUSTOMER CARE ON THE GO

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A SHAREABLE, WEB-HOSTED FAQ

It doesn’t take long to realize that a handful of questions get asked again and again. To ease the tedious answering process (especially when you can’t cut and paste from your desktop), point your customers to an online resource that can thoroughly answer their questions better than a brief 140 characters. When compiling the FAQ guide, take the following steps:

Gather input from your entire team to ensure you have captured all questions.1

Host the FAQ on your website and give it a short, memorable URL for mobile sharing. 2

Ensure your site is responsive or mobile-friendly—consumers may be on the go, too.3

Attach a link to your replies to common concerns or when it’s relevant and helpful.4

01SOCIAL CUSTOMER CARE ON THE GO

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A MESSAGE SCHEDULING TOOL

Customer care is about providing your customers with interesting, useful and relevant content when they need it most. Just because you leave your desk at 6 p.m. doesn’t mean all your customers log o� social media and are done for the day. To ensure you’re reaching your audience when they’re engaged, enlist the help of a scheduling and monitoring tool and ask yourself the following questions:

• Is your audience active at night and on weekends?

If so, schedule interesting, fun social content at that time so you’re top of

mind (even when you’re not actively trying to be).

• Is your scheduling platform intuitive and based on your specific

audience’s patterns?

For instance, Sprout Social’s ViralPost™ technology maximizes a posts’

engagement by automatically delivering content at the precise moment it

will have the greatest impact with your audience.

• What type of messaging works best for my audience?

Your tool should provide you with analytics so you can determine which

messages resonate best with your audience (garnering more responses,

comments, retweets etc.).

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A REALISTIC RESPONSE STRATEGY

The quicker you can respond to customer questions or issues, the better; but an instantaneous response to every message isn’t feasible. Most customers will understand it may take a little longer during non-business hours, but you have a responsibility to set expectations and communicate them appropriately. Take these steps to e�ectively manage your customers’ expectations:

• Use analytics to determine your team’s average response time and rate

(weekday, weekend & o� hours) to understand what’s possible and

realistic for your team.

• Determine a realistic response time across your entire team that you all

feel comfortable you can always meet and work towards that goal.

• Make average response times publicly available on your website and your

social profiles.

• If your current response rates and times are not up to snu�, work as a

team to identify resources or roles that need to improve to succeed.

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A KILLER MOBILE APP

Despite your best preparation—like amazing scheduled content and an extremely detailed FAQ—customer questions are going to pop up when you’re out of the o�ce and on the go. Having a user-friendly, intuitive and functional mobile application will make those instances much easier to handle. When you’re looking for a companion app, make sure it has the following functionality:

• A simple, intuitive interface that enables you to quickly and clearly identify

customer interactions that need attention.

• Tasking functionality so you can assign each message to the best person

to solve the issue (or assign it to yourself to answer later if you’re not in a

place or state to answer immediately).

• Conversation history—like that included in Sprout’s mobile app—that

allows you to see all your interactions with each customer and provide

them with a personalized and unique social response.

• Device-specific design. There are best practices and preferred

functionality for iOS and Android devices, so unique apps make on the go

management that much smoother.

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STAFF POLICIES TO ENSURE TIME OFF

If you have a team managing social engagement and customer care, designate specific times during the week when each person“unplugs” from all social media responsibility. Social burnout is very real—and can lead to negative consequences. Consider these tactics as you set policies:

• Be open about your limitations with customers and if they are wondering

why it took you a while to respond, be honest.

• Use team management tools to make sure someone’s managing the

customer relationship when you’re out.

• Allow team members to self-select o�-duty hours based on their

schedules and preferred lifestyles, it will make on the go social

maintenance that much easier.

• Strictly enforce or incent time away from social if necessary; it will result in

a better working experience for your team and a more positive brand

experience for brand fans and followers.

Providing truly great social customer care is a 24/7 job but that doesn’t mean you have to be strapped to your desk with a bucket of co�ee to keep you awake. With some preparation, smart tools and common sense, you can delight your customers and grow your social presence while maintaining your sanity.

05SOCIAL CUSTOMER CARE ON THE GO

1.866.878.3231 [email protected]

About Sprout Social

Sprout Social provides social media engagement, publishing and analytics tools for leading brands including AMD, GrubHub, Spotify, Urban Outfitters and Zipcar. A powerful platform for social business available via web browser, iOS & Android apps, Sprout enables brands to more e�ectively manage social channels, collaborate across teams and provide an exceptional customer experience. Headquartered in Chicago, Sprout is a Twitter Certified Product, Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer and Google+ Pages API Partner.

Download the Sprout Social iPhone or Android app to manage your customer relationships on the go. For more information or to start a free 30-day trial, visit sproutsocial.com.

social customer care on the go

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