Automated Customer Support Solutions for Social Media Channels

Offering a great customer support experience can have a tremendous impact on your company’s success. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, a loyal customer can be worth as much as 10x their first purchase, so providing a positive customer experience in all areas, including support, can help drive your company’s bottom-line.

Good customer service is comprised of two things: the efficiency of your support team and the types of questions it can address for your customers. Add to these challenges the fact that social media has become more than just a marketing channel and is now driving how brands manage relationships throughout the customer experience. Customers today tend to reach out for service over multiple social channels and expect immediate assistance. Therefore, choosing the right customer support solutions and building effective processes are critical to help differentiate your brand from your competition.

Providing Great Customer Service through Social Media

Social media sites, such as Facebook, have evolved to become valid and important channels through which consumers expect to receive customer service. According to Sprout Social, 90 percent of consumers surveyed have leveraged social media for some type of communication with a brand. What’s more, more than one-third indicated that they preferred communication through social media to more traditional channels, including phone and email.

Facebook was the first social platform to begin emphasizing brand responsiveness on its business pages. For starters, a Call-to-Action button was placed on the cover image to provide visitors an easy way of contacting their brand. “Contact Us” was offered to enable brands and customers to connect more efficiently from within the Facebook experience.

Facebook then began to track query response rates to show the speed of response visitors can expect from a brand when they contact them through the platform. Those brands who have shown quick acknowledgement are identified by Facebook as offering a superior level of responsiveness to their visitors.

Chatbots as Customer Support Solutions in Social Media

Given the growing reliance of consumers to drive customer support communications through social media, chatbots have emerged as a highly valuable customer support solution to those brands that are seeking to differentiate themselves through responsiveness.

Chatbots are software programs developed to manage one-to-one online chat interactions social platforms, websites, or some other chat interface. The power and value of chatbots is in their ability to provide 24/7 support with immediate access to those consumers who are looking to interact with their brand in an efficient way.

In deploying chatbots, brands are able to elevate their customer support experience without the need to hire and train additional staff. And well-designed chatbots can actually improve over time as they manage more and more customer support chat communications.

Are you interested in learning more about chatbots as part of your customer support solutions? Contact us to discuss.