Can You Automate Your Social Media Customer Experience?
Over the last 10 years, business owners have seen social media become an integral part of the customer experience. As a result, automation tools began to flood the market. But can the social part of the customer experience be automated?
Social media is about more than updating your followers on company news. It’s about engagement. If you’re not engaging, the conversation is one sided, which can sound sales-y, a big social media no, no.
A story on automation:
Widget, Inc. puts an update on Twitter about a new line of products, which came from their RSS feed – an automation tool. A customer tries the product and has a question about it. Since they learned about the update from Twitter, they go there to ask their question. However, since a real person doesn’t manage Widget, Inc.’s Twitter profile, the question never gets answered. Now that customer must step around an obstacle to get their answer. Worse off, they could forget about their question and then forget about you.
A story on engagement:
The same company, Widget, Inc., still uses RSS to automatically post some of their updates on their Twitter profile. However, now they have a real person managing that platform. A customer posts a question on Twitter and, within minutes, a customer support agent has responded to them. A conversation has begun. If the question is more complicated, the agent managing social media has the opportunity to move the conversation offline and work with them until the customer’s needs are met.
In the second story, you can see how the customer was managed from beginning to end. In the first story, you can see how even one obstacle can make it too difficult for a customer to do business with you. In the article, “Put Your Customers First or Perish, Seriously”, you will learn how putting up too many obstacles can ruin the customer experience, causing them to take their business elsewhere.
Now that you understand how important it is to manage every customer’s experience, no matter the channel they use to engage, you’re probably wondering how you can fit another employee in the budget. Before you hire a social media manager, build your knowledge base. Time consuming frequently asked questions will begin to handle themselves and support agents will have the time to engage with your followers. Not only that, you’ll be surprised at how many calls will be deflected when customers get the help they want via social media. Learn how to start building your knowledge base by reading our helpful blog on the topic!
photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa via photopin cc
