Investing in Instagram marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your audience in today’s digital world.

There are more than 200 million businesses already connecting with customers through Instagram on a regular basis. Plus, 80% of consumers are consistently engaging with brands via social media. However, it’s worth remembering Instagram isn’t just for advertising.

Fast-paced and people-centric platforms like Instagram also provide companies with a convenient opportunity to serve and delight their customers. According to reports, 47% of US respondents feel more positively about brands that respond to customers on social channels.

Used correctly, your Instagram marketing efforts can strengthen your relationships with your target audience, and help you to differentiate your brand through social service.

How to use Instagram for customer service

Using Instagram for customer service means looking for viable ways to connect with your audience, answer their questions, and even respond to complaints in a social setting.

Instagram gives you a way to respond to frequently asked questions at speed with Stories, Live, and newsfeed posts. It also makes it easy to track @mentions, connect with Instagram followers via comments and even address complex issues through direct messaging.

So, where do you get started?

1. Add contact information to your Instagram bio

When developing your Instagram marketing strategy to include customer service, your focus should be on making the client journey as straightforward as possible. Adding contact details to your Instagram bio ensures your customers can quickly and easily get in touch with their questions.

Instagram for Business accounts allow users to add “action buttons” to their profile. Users can click on these buttons to contact you directly about their concerns.

These buttons will only appear on the mobile version of the Instagram app, so it’s still worth including some additional options for getting in touch. You can also list valuable information on your Instagram bio, such as when your employees might be available to answer questions.

2. Create Instagram highlights for FAQs

All companies have questions which seem to come up more often than most. Your clients might have questions about deliveries and returns, or they may want to know more about the service packages you offer. Rather than having to respond to each customer who reaches out with these questions, you can streamline your service by creating FAQ responses in your Instagram Story highlights.

Click on the “+” button on your profile page under “Story Highlights” to add information from your most recent Stories. Alternatively, you can create Highlights directly from your Instagram Stories page. Make sure you add a title to your highlight, so your customer knows what information it covers.

3. Respond to comments transparently

Sometimes, when your customers have questions or concerns, they’ll reach out to you directly through your post comment section. Some of these comments will be simple questions about the product or service you’re showcasing. Other times, your customers might leave complaints or negative comments in your posts.

No matter what kind of comment you’re dealing with, it’s important to respond transparently, honestly, and professionally. Make sure you use your comment responses as a chance to demonstrate how much you value your target audience. Teach your team to use a consistent tone of voice, and let customers know where they can reach out if they have additional questions.

Remember, 73% of respondents say they’re more likely to pay a premium price from products and services delivered by transparent companies.

4. Set up quick replies for direct messages

Outside of commenting on your posts, sending a direct message is often the easiest way for your customers to reach you directly. As your company grows, the number of messages you receive is likely to increase. With this in mind, it’s worth empowering your team to respond as quickly as possible. You can do this with “Quick Replies.”

Quick Replies are canned responses you can create within your Instagram marketing profile for business users. Simply click on “Settings” then “Business” followed by “Quick Replies” to start adding your responses. You can also save responses you commonly send to customers directly to the “Quick Reply” section.

5. Ask for customer feedback

All customers like to know they’re being heard by the companies they interact with. A great way to show your clients you value their insights is by regularly asking for feedback.

When you’re posting on Instagram, and in your Stories, ask people to share their thoughts and feelings about your service, and your products. Not only does this show respect to your customers, but it also gives you some great user-generated content. You can share reviews, testimonials, and other customer insights in your Stories and posts for social proof.

Tips to improve Instagram customer service

The good news is establishing an Instagram marketing strategy for customer service is much simpler than it might appear. However, you’ll need to work on protecting your Instagram account constantly, so you can ensure that no one should hack Instagram if you’re delighting your audience.

While the right strategy for Instagram customer service can significantly improve your relationship with your audience, a mistake can also seriously damage your reputation.

Here are some more tips to help you thrive:

Respond quickly

People often turn to social media when they want answers to their questions as quickly as possible. The more responsive you can be, the happier you’ll make your audience. Ideally, you should aim to respond to every query within 30 minutes. If, like many companies, you can’t be available at all times, create quick responses to let your customers know when your service agents will be online.

Meet and exceed customer expectations

As you develop your Instagram customer service strategy, pay close attention to the expectations of your audience. Collecting insights about what makes your customers happy will ensure you can deliver a better quality of support in future. Where possible, aim to go above and beyond in serving your customers. Don’t just answer their questions, do everything you can to set them up for success.

Stay consistent with your tone of voice

Instagram customer service isn’t just an opportunity to support your clients on more channels. It’s also a great way to showcase your unique brand personality. With this in mind, you should ensure your tone of voice is consistent, no matter who responds to your audience. Creating guidelines on the kind of language, emojis, and phrases to use should help to support your employees.

Use hashtags strategically

Hashtags can be a valuable way to make content more visible and accessible to your audience. If you’re posting responses to common questions, or sharing feedback from your audience on your news feed, consider adding some hashtags. The right tags will make it easier for customers to find the responses relevant to their needs and interests.

Making the most of Instagram customer service

Upgrading your Instagram marketing efforts to include a strategy for customer service is one of the best ways to ensure you can delight your target audience. Approached correctly, the right strategy will boost your business reputation, and help you to connect with your customers on their level.

Just remember to pay attention to the feedback your customers leave, and watch your analytics to ensure your customer service strategy is having the right impact.

Twitter can be a great way to connect with customers and build customer relationships, but it can also be a place where customer complaints are aired.

If you’re not prepared to handle customer complaints on Twitter, you could end up making a bad situation worse. In this article, you will find some key tips for handling complaints on Twitter.

1. Respond Quickly

Twitter is a fast-paced platform, and customers expect a quick response to their complaints. If you don’t respond quickly, they may take their complaint to another social media platform or even to your competitors.

Fortunately, Twitter provides an easy way for businesses to respond to customer complaints quickly and easily. Make sure you have someone assigned to monitor your Twitter account so that customer complaints can be addressed quickly.

By monitoring Twitter for mentions of your company, you can ensure that any negative feedback is dealt with swiftly. In addition, setting up automated alerts can help you to respond even more quickly. By taking advantage of these tools, you can turn customer complaints into an opportunity to build customer loyalty.

2. Acknowledge the Complaint

Customers that take the time to reach out and lodge a complaint are giving you an opportunity to improve your product or service. It’s important to not only acknowledge the customer’s complaint but also to show them that you’re taking their feedback seriously.

Before responding to a customer complaint, do your research and make sure you have all the facts. If you don’t know the answer to a question, let the customer know that you’re looking into it and will get back to them as soon as possible.

3. Take Ownership of the Issue

When a customer complains, it’s important to take ownership of the issue. This means acknowledging that the problem was caused by your company and not by the customer. It also means putting the customer’s needs first and doing everything you can to resolve the issue. It’s your job to take that blame and make things right. This may require making some tough decisions, but it’s important to do what’s best for the customer.

4. Be Polite and Professional

Customer complaints are a fact of life for any business but responding to them doesn’t have to be a nightmare. When it comes to Twitter, the key is to be always polite and professional. Of course, that can be easier said than done when you’re dealing with an irate customer. But remember, everything you say will be public, so it’s important to take the high road.

First and foremost, always apologize for the customer’s bad experience. Even if it wasn’t your fault, they need to know that you’re sorry. Then, do your best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. If necessary, reach out to the customer privately to get more information or offer compensation. And whatever you do, don’t get defensive or attack the customer.

5. Be Clear and Concise

Twitter is a limited-character platform, so you need to be clear and concise when responding to customer complaints. This means that you need to avoid long paragraphs and complicated language. Stick to the facts and keep your responses short and sweet.

Remember, customers are busy and they don’t have time to read a novel. Your goal should be to resolve the issue as quickly as possible so that the customer can move on.

6. Be Transparent

Transparency is key when it comes to customer complaints. If you’re not transparent, customers will lose trust in your company. When it comes to Twitter, transparency means being open and honest about what went wrong and what you’re doing to fix it.

Make sure that you provide regular updates on the progress of the resolution. This will show customers that you’re taking their complaints seriously and that you’re working hard to resolve the issue.

7. Train Your Staff

It’s important to train your staff on how to handle customer complaints on Twitter. First, make sure your staff is aware of the importance of customer service on social media. They need to understand that every customer complaint is an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one.

Next, provide them with some guidelines for how to handle customer complaints. For example, tell them to always be polite and never engage in arguments with customers. They should also try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

8. Keep a Record of Complaints

It’s important to keep track of customer complaints, no matter where they’re coming from. And with more and more people using Twitter to voice their grievances, it’s essential to know how to keep a record of complaints on the platform.

There are a few different ways you can go about this. First, you can set up a Google Alert for your business name or customer service Twitter handle. This will send you an email anytime someone mentions your business on Twitter, which makes it easy to keep track of any complaints that are posted.

Another option is to use a tool like Hootsuite Insights, which allows you to track all mentions of your business on social media, including Twitter. This makes it easy to see all the customer complaints in one place and quickly address them.

You can also use a customer service tool like Zendesk or Desk.com to track customer complaints. This will allow you to see all the interactions between your company and individual customers, including complaints.

No matter which method you choose, it’s important to track customer complaints so you can learn from your mistakes and improve your customer service.

9. Use Twitter’s Customer Service Features

Twitter offers several customer service features that can help you resolve customer complaints more quickly and efficiently. For example, you can use Twitter’s built-in search feature to find tweets about your business. This will make it easy to see all the complaints that have been posted about your company.

You can also use Twitter’s customer service features to send Direct Messages to customers. This allows you to resolve customer complaints privately, without having to post public updates.

Finally, you can use Twitter’s built-in reporting tools to flag abusive or harassing tweets. This will help you protect your company from online abuse and harassment.

10. Take it Offline

Sometimes, it’s necessary to take customer complaints offline. This means that you need to stop responding to tweets and start communicating with the customer through other channels, like email or phone.

There are a few reasons why you might want to take a complaint offline. Maybe the customer is being abusive or harassing. Or maybe the issue is too complex to resolve on Twitter.

Whatever the reason, make sure that you communicate with the customer in a way that is convenient for them. And always make sure to keep track of any offline conversations so that you can follow up on them later.

The Benefits of Handling Complaints on Twitter

When it comes to customer complaints, Twitter can be a powerful tool. In an age where social media dominates the conversation, customers are increasingly likely to take to Twitter to voice their grievances. And while this may seem like a bad thing, it can actually be an opportunity for businesses to build customer loyalty.

When handled properly, customer complaints on Twitter can help businesses to build trust and credibility. First, it shows that businesses are listening to their customers and are willing to take action in response to their concerns. Secondly, it provides an opportunity for businesses to demonstrate their customer service skills in public. By responding quickly and effectively to customer complaints on Twitter, businesses can show the world that they care about their customers and are committed to providing excellent customer service.

Jason Grier, EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Reputation looks at the future of customer feedback surveys and how customer emotion is better captured on social media than by traditional survey forms.

For decades, traditional surveys have been a direct line of feedback from consumer to business, providing insight into a variety of areas from customer service and messaging to facilities maintenance and more. But social media has introduced a more intimate, more accurate and faster way for businesses to connect with customers and capture their feedback. Social media listening posts are also more available: Reddit, Facebook and Twitter are widely used among both organizations and customers to interact, with more niche platforms also available. Even video is emerging on the customer-feedback scene. So, it begs the question: Do traditional surveys have a place in a modern world dominated by social media?

Social media and the state of customer feedback

In case anyone needs reminding, social media is a force in all aspects of our world, affecting how, when, where and with whom we communicate; how we learn and stay informed; and how we conduct business. It’s also changed the role of the customer from passive to very influential, which has been both a boon and a beast for many businesses (a boon because it provides great insight to better inform the brand of the customer experience; a beast because if the feedback is ignored, it could affect the brand’s reputation). The number of user-friendly listening posts has also increased and continues to expand, providing more platforms from which people can interact with others and let their voices be heard.

This ability to communicate to broad audiences via social media also presents new ways to give feedback on all aspects of a brand or its product, satisfying customers’ expectations for rapid and real-time responses to their queries and complaints. Brands that leverage social media platforms to gain insight into customer sentiment can take fast action on this feedback, thereby mitigating potential issues with other customers. In addition, fast responses make the customer feel valued, creating stronger relationships and fostering brand loyalty.

Traditional surveys take on a diminished role

In contrast, traditional survey methods — while still relevant as and used more as a research device — seem archaic and clunky. Brands still sending out long surveys via email or regular mail hope against hope that the recipient will not only take the time to open the survey, but also that they will spend 15 to 20 minutes filling it out. Simply put, today’s fast-paced, instant-gratification world no longer has the patience for traditional surveys.

Traditional surveys also can’t capture the real-time emotional side of customer sentiment, which has an increasingly larger stake in the world of customer feedback. It is this emotion that drives customers to talk about their experience, and it’s what comes through on social media. For example, a customer has just had a really negative experience at a restaurant and pulls out his smartphone to relay this experience over Twitter. The listening post is ready to receive the customer’s Tweet, the emotion in the Tweet is palpable, and the feedback is broadcast across the Internet. By the time a traditional survey comes in the mail or email asking for this customer’s feedback, the customer’s emotion is harder to communicate. More importantly, the restaurant in this scenario has lost the opportunity to rapidly respond to and remediate the issue and show the world that it’s committed to ensuring the best possible customer experience.

Organizations small and large talk about wanting to recognize lifetime customer value. But if they aren’t listening to what their customers have to say through all the available listening posts — that is, if they’re only focused on traditional surveys — they’ll never recognize lifetime customer value or understand customer sentiment. This realization means that the future of traditional surveys isn’t too bright. In fact, while they’ll still be used for research purposes, traditional surveys will continue to diminish in terms of their dominance in the world of customer feedback.

About the Author

Jason Grier leads Reputation‘s customer loyalty and growth initiatives as executive vice president and chief customer officer. Jason is a former senior vice president of Global Support Operations and chief customer officer at McAfee, where he spent more than 10 years.

While at McAfee, Jason built a reputation as an industry leader in customer support and operations. His teams were honored with a number of awards, including the Intel Quality Award, a prestigious honor for outstanding quality and personification of Intel’s values and the highest team honor given at Intel. His teams also won two TSIA Star Awards, two Service & Support Professionals Association Awards, and a Stevie Award for innovation in action.

Before his time at McAfee Jason held executive-level positions at Sutherland Global Services and Covad Communications. Jason holds a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Pfeiffer University.

Social media has become a hot topic in the customer service sector, and for good reason.

A recent survey by NM Incite found that nearly half of all users of social media channels, like Twitter or Facebook, have used these websites to reach out to companies for service.

A majority of these users are also likely to recommend a company to others if they receive satisfactory service from that company. It is beneficial to pay attention to social media when it comes to providing your customers with the highest quality of care. Check out these five ways social media can bring your customer service to the next level.

Everyone’s Doing It

According to key internet statistics social media continues to explode in popularity, as more individuals are turning to these channels to connect with friends and family and even do business online. Companies that recognize the prevalence of social media in today’s culture will be in a better position to leverage those channels to their benefit.

24/7 Customer Service Option

Social media offers the ability for 24/7 customer service like never before. Studies have shown that customers will frequently head to social websites if they cannot connect with the service department of a company through other means. Just imagine their surprise and delight when their Twitter or Facebook efforts put them in touch with an actual representative from your company. Just be sure to staff your social media appropriately, or you may end up with a frustrated customer that has to wait many hours for a Twitter response.

More Interaction Options

Social media offers one more way for customers to interact with your business. In addition to using Facebook and Twitter for communicating directly with customers, you can utilize those outlets to notify customers of upcoming promotions and sales. The style of interaction can also be tailored to your customer’s needs, whether they have a specific situation to discuss or simply want to interact with your company on a more casual level.

Effective Crisis Management

A customer that is not happy with your company may take his rant to his Facebook page or Twitter account. By effectively managing social media for such communication, you can proactively manage complaints in the social media realm for all to see. Customers that receive replies from companies on social networks often walk away from the situation satisfied – and may even share their satisfaction with others.

Ability to Sell Goods and Services

Interaction with your customers via social networks may alert you to specific needs your customers currently have. That knowledge can then be used to suggest goods or services to the customer that best meet those needs. This communication channel is just one more opportunity for companies to sell and cross-sell goods and services to customers, which can translate into a more robust bottom line.

Good, bad or otherwise, social media is a trend that appears to be here for the long haul. Companies that accept – and even embrace – that trend are in the best position to use social networks to their advantage when it comes to providing the highest level of customer service.

Customers today are more demanding of brands, products and services than ever before.

They are smarter, more aware of the power they hold and have higher expectations than ever before.

To remain profitable, businesses have no choice but to keep up. And this goes way beyond developing excellent products and services. Consumers now expect flawless customer service, as well.

In this digital era, this is no longer confined to in-store service, but online as well.

This article highlights four social media customer service best practices to help you wow your clients online.

1. Respond as Quickly as Possible

While people might not expect 24/7 service over email and phone, social media comes with an expectation of round the clock availability.

This means businesses have to respond to complaints, reviews and inquiries in record time.

Essentially, failing to respond in good time can cause customers to speak ill of your brand both online and offline. In turn, you could gain a bad reputation and lose business in the process.

For businesses without the resources to man their social pages 24 hours a day, programmable messenger bots are a fair compromise.

2. Complaint Management Strategy

You cannot please everyone all the time, which means you have to prepare for the odd negative comment or complaint every so often.

Because the intensity of these occurrences can blindside your team, it’s important to have a social media strategy outlining how social media complaints should be handled.

There are no absolutes when it comes to dealing with complaints publicly or privately. However, if you require a phone number, account details, an email and so on, the rule of thumb is to request the customer to respond on direct messenger for their privacy.

Either way, respond with a cordial acknowledgment of the complaint and then give concise directions for the next step.

Only give resolution timelines when you are absolutely sure you will deliver results. When in doubt, advise on the next steps you seek to take, request for contact information, and then keep the customer updated.

3. Include a Name and a Greeting

People love the sound of their names. If a customer’s name is apparent from their profile, use it in your response.

Begin with a greeting, address the individual by name or social profile initials, followed by your message. Then end with your name or initials.

The last bit is important on two fronts.

First, it allows a business to see who responded and where to begin following up internally if need be. Secondly, it humanizes your response to your customers.

Addressing someone by their name makes them feel heard, recognized and appreciated as compared to addressing them generically, or not addressing them at all.

4. Keep Your Emotions in Check

Customer service is not an easy job. It’s easy to get frustrated when you are doing the best you can but are getting negative comments thrown at your business.

To make matters worse, some of this might be completely unreasonable or even be a customer’s fault.

No matter the circumstances, resist the urge to defend yourself or to blame the customer. Instead, tackle negativity with positivity.

In-store, a customer complaint can be heard by a handful of people at most. Online, you have an audience in their thousands.

To protect your business, be objective, remain calm, and communicate the value you have for your customer as well as your willingness to resolve their issue.

Anything less than this and your business comes off as unprofessional and uncaring. These are two qualities of a business that consumers shun.

Take the Challenge

The ever-changing world of social media marketing can feel overwhelming at times.

However, do not let it wear you down. Think of it as yet another part of human interactions with both good and bad outcomes, and then challenge yourself to slowly but surely create more positive interactions. It certainly pays off.

Social media is ingrained in the global population. Worldwide, the number of users at the start of 2019 has grown to almost 3.5 billion and in the UK alone there are 45 million social media users. This equates to 67% of the population. Of these, 39 million are mobile social media users.

With social media firmly cemented in our daily lives, it’s no surprise that we, as customers, are further utilising those channels to gain quicker and more personalised engagements with brands, with the full expectation that those brands are listening.

Historically, companies have used social media for building brand awareness and marketing. But now, thanks to advancements with customer service platforms, social media is fast becoming every business’ best kept tool for customer support, reputation management, and personalised engagements with customers – on their terms. 1 in 3 social media users prefer social media customer care services to telephone or email making it a key differentiator for brands.

Drive deeper engagement

There has never been a better time for businesses to harness social media as a customer communications channel. Social media platforms allow brands to deliver real time, superior customer service efficiently, proactively and with a more complete level of personalisation than other channels, across multiple time zones.

By leveraging social media channels, brands can dive deeper engagement and, coupled with advancements in technology, can make their responses unique and personal to the individual customer. As Accenture reports, 75% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a company that knows their name and purchase history and recommends products based on their preferences.

 Social media for efficiency

To deliver a superior experience across all the channels, having a single customer view is imperative; regardless of which route of contact the customer takes into the contact centre. Today’s customer journey seamlessly moves between the channels; be that social, email, SMS, text, or web chat, agents should have a one-stop-shop for all of their customer interactions in order to provide fast, and accurate resolutions first time, across an all-in-one interaction management platform.

A single view platform makes it easy to consume multiple cloud-based solutions in a single location. It can drive productivity and elevate the customer experience to a new level without worrying about costs, infrastructure, or licences. It can provide all the tools needed to deliver an excellent customer experience, including workforce optimisation, to increase efficiencies and employee engagement and performance analytics to deliver actionable insights on response times and effectiveness.

AI enabled customer service technology, such as Google’s AI enabled contact centre solutions, in partnership with Mitel, have the ability to route social interactions in the same way as all other media. Routine tasks/questions can be managed by a virtual (AI) agent and, if needed a real-life agent can be brought into the conversation.

Harnessing AI powered, rich data analytics can further offer valuable insights that can be used to enhance, improve and personalise the customer experience and even predict what the customer wants before they even know it. Machine learning algorithms can learn and anticipate customer needs from context; customer history and preferences, with the further possibility of capturing insights from infinite online data to determine how the customer will choose to engage.

Empowered agents through AI

By leveraging AI enabled solutions into their business models, businesses will observe immediate ROI through increased employee productivity. The use of Virtual Agents accelerates and automates enquiries offering solutions and options at speed, while the Contact Centre staff are free to manage the more challenging and comprehensive tasks, and exceed customer expectation with a better, ‘intelligent’ and more efficient service. Agents stay connected through mobile optimised platforms and can work from anywhere using a smartphone.

By harnessing social media as a contact centre channel alongside embracing AI, smart businesses will reap the benefits of delivering exceptional social media customer service, from deeper customer engagement, insight and learning, to increased sales and positive endorsements from socially happy customers.

About the Author

Nick Beardsley is Enterprise Director at Olive Communications, the UK’s fastest-growing provider of unified communications and managed cloud solutions to high-growth SME and enterprise businesses.

Nick is an industry expert in developing transformative growth strategies for some of the UK’s best-known brands, both nationally and internationally. Focused on streamlining business operations, cost optimisation and driving cultural change in the modern workplace, he places an ultimate focus on delivering tangible customer service and experience improvements.

Customer service professionals could be forgiven for thinking that their efforts to ensure top-quality assistance go largely unnoticed; we have a tendency to assume bad experiences have a more lasting impact on customers, and that a good customer experience is quickly forgotten.

However, new research shows that customers are just as likely to share a positive experience as a negative one. The survey commissioned by Yonder Digital Group canvassed the opinions of 1,000 consumers in January 2017, asking them if, and how they share their experiences with a company with their family or network.

89% of respondents confirm they tell their family and friends following a good customer experience, while 84% say they relay a bad experience to people they know. The idea that consumers have a greater tendency to communicate criticism is therefore a myth, and customers should be given more credit for acknowledging excellence in customer service.

Similarly, 38% affirmed they post about good customer experiences with a company on social media, compared to 31% who post about bad experiences. With almost 40% of Europeans on Facebook and 600 million active Instagrammers, it’s unsurprising that social media is the first port of call for some, though it is not always to complain; rather, social media users enjoy telling friends and followers about good treatment and positive outcomes following contact with a company.

As a result of social media, this sharing of experiences has arguably become almost as important as the experience itself, with customers quick to review products and services through posts, ratings and photos. Their aim is often to garner positive comments from others, as well as to pass on recommendations.

Additionally, these results suggest that customers are not so accustomed to excellent customer experiences that they have stopped discussing them. This means there is still plenty for businesses to learn to help them harness this readiness of customers to talk about swift query resolution, friendly service or rewards for loyalty. Businesses should look to encourage sharing by maintaining excellence in customer services, and by gaining a better understanding of the customer.

Looking more closely at the breakdown of Yonder’s results, it is clear that assumptions about customers are not always correct. Though the research does confirm that younger people are more likely to post about a customer experience on social media, there is no such pattern when it comes to verbally sharing experiences; consumers of all ages are just as likely to tell friends and family about an experience.

It is therefore a mistake for companies to coast along with broad ideas about their customers. Instead, they should take stock of the data that is made available by customers, and conduct an analysis to help produce insights about what customers really prefer. It is through these insights that businesses can improve their service, and as a result, promote positive sharing.

Previous research was able to shed some light on customer preferences, and found that customers tend to increase their business with companies who are able to provide live customer services at crucial points of the customer journey, whether to respond to a query over the phone, or to provide key information in person. At the same time, customers value channel choice, enabling individuals to choose their favoured means of communication depending on the situation.

These results provide a sound basis for further investigation within businesses, as enthusiastic customers are indispensable ambassadors for any brand. Sharing should be encouraged and facilitated, not only by continual improvement of customer services, but also through an analysis of the channels customers use to talk about their experiences. As for customer service representatives, they can take heart that consumers do take notice of excellent service and reward it with their powerful championing.

About the Author

Graham is an entrepreneurial CRM & marketing leader with extensive industry recognition. Obsessed with increasing customer value and ROI through innovative data-driven customer experience solutions, he helped pioneer CRM during the early 1990s within the UK automotive industry through the creation of Ion Group, a contact centre led business. Ion rapidly became the recognised leading agency within this space winning a number of prestigious marketing industry body awards. Since then he has covered key leadership roles at Moonriver Group, Arvato Loyalty, where he was CEO, Caddyshack Marketing, Go Response, and most recently, Yonder Digital Group.

The efforts companies make to customize the experience are triggered by the need to secure existing clients and attract new ones by positive word of mouth. Brand loyalty is hard earned and easily shattered by just ignoring a tweet. In the speed age, people crave for attention.

Customer-Centric Culture

There is a recurring feedback loop between clients’ expectations from a provider and the level of service. Due to customer-centric companies like Amazon and an increased personalization of offers, now people accept nothing less than playing the role of captain in the retail journey. The mass-production, one-size fits all era is being replaced by highly customized products and services.

Innovative companies have dropped traditional ways of getting more customers like price wars and incremental improvement of products in favor of investing in big data powered AI systems that can offer a personal touch, create tailor-made experiences and are safe from identity theft and cyber crime.

Personal with an AI twist

The paradox of this approach is that powerful, cutting-edge technology is striving to replicate a genuine human touch in the relationship between the company and the client. Algorithms are gradually learning to offer that cozy small-town feeling to customers. A dedicated personal account manager is no longer an option, considering the scale of operations. Just as in your father’s time the bank clerk recognized him by voice when he called in to clear a check, AI development can now do the same by speech recognition, natural language processing, and dialogue management.

By knowing all about your purchasing history, searches, and even GPS-based location, the system can compare your profile to thousands of “people just like you” and make recommendations, like Netflix. This is, in fact, a granular market segmentation focused on behaviors and preferences instead of considering demographics.

Personalization begins in the market scanning phase and continues down the sales funnel at each stage. Advertising is served on the potential customers’ preferred environments, at the most likely times they can pay attention, displaying products that are considered most suitable by the algorithm about previous searches. Tapping into the influence potential of the client is done by offering carefully chosen incentives, determined by behavioral cluster analysis. This is a consistent step forward from redeeming coupons for a free product and Tupperware parties.

Leverage Experiences

Customer experiences can mean anything from a website visit to an in-app purchase, attending a corporate-sponsored marathon or dealing with unresponsive customer support. Every experience shapes the client’s perception of the company and triggers a response to continue or stop. Given the decreasing attention span, organizations cannot afford to waste any interaction.

Engagement from the brand usually makes the client feel important and well catered for. In the “good morning texts” era, companies are expected to show interest and respond within a few hours, especially to undesirable comments and complaints. If the client shares a negative story on social media, it is a cry for help. Ignoring it means both wasting opportunity and more work to get new business. Almost every client will switch to a competitor after a poor customer experience.

AI can help with these problems by employing multiple strategies at once. Unstructured data analysis, like e-mail scanning, can identify problem areas and speed up solutions. Keeping a customer interaction history that creates profiles, saves the company from the shame of not remembering a past problem. A step forward is to propose incentives for the client to stay when they want to end the collaboration due to recurring trouble.

Social media channels are both data mining sites to take the pulse of the client sentiment towards the brand as well as strategy tools to reach the consumers in their natural environment. Loyalty is built on trust and trust is created by dialogue and mutual values. Show customers that you listen to understand and react to their communication and needs. AI can now take on simple tasks as responding as a low-level customer agent. Implement code that automates responses to simple inquiries and passes on to well-trained humans the more complex ones. Aim for zero open threads (make a dashboard and keep it visible).

Ensure Safety & Privacy

Although most clients are ready to trade their data in exchange for a better rate, customization options or a more convenient interaction (think Amazon 1-Click buy), the concerns regarding safety and privacy are real and increasing. Cybercrime and identity theft not only produce material damages but shatter a client’s trust in a company’s ability to protect their data.

Financial institutions and healthcare organizations are entrusted with some of the most sensitive data and should counteract malicious attempts with equal force. Investing in AI that can detect attacks is no longer optional, but a requirement to remain credible in the minds of customers. Algorithms blacklist IPs, alert customers via their preferred contact method and ask for human verification of quarantined actions. Customer loyalty is given in exchange for the peace of mind of knowing your data is only used to improve your experience and to offer you the best deals.

Tech Challenges

To engage AI in building customer loyalty, companies must collect and put to good use impressive amounts of data or make sense of existing data repositories. Many enterprises already have vast and diverse data which remains untouched due to lack of structure and know-how.

Capturing and properly organizing data is the first challenge of a company looking to be more customer-oriented through AI. A subsequent challenge includes using a unitary system to have an overview of data coming from different sources such as invoices, e-mail, social media, CCTV and CRM. The biggest problem remains to turn data into actionable insights, if possible, in real-time.

Loyalty towards companies emerges from similar mechanisms that work in personal relations. Trust, consistent positive experiences, and the same values are the foundation of a long-lasting and fruitful collaboration. AI can play multiple roles, including a personal advisor, brand ambassador, dedicated marketer and data protector, all based on the same set of information.

So you’re available on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Google+ – you’ve put your brand out there on social media, and even that makes you better than the vast majority. You respond to your mentions by replying, liking or giving a nice little retweet. You’re engaging using reactive customer service and picking up any query that comes your way – that you have knowledge of.

But social media is a big place, and there are a lot of conversations that take place away from the main stage, without you even knowing.

The problem is, you might not know what a customer is saying about you, if they don’t directly mention you, but you can be certain the public do. Brand reputation can be destroyed in a second, whether it’s from a disgruntled customer or someone wanting help and never receiving it. So the right way to deal with these indirect mentions is to engage, not just observe.

Indirect Mentions

You may think the majority of customer service tweets included a tagged mention of the business it relates to. Yet, from the 37% of tweets that were Customer Service related, less than 3% actually use the @ symbol. This means watching your tagged mentions is not covering all the communication channels, and you could be missing out on engaging with a very important query. Indirect mentions have as much importance as direct, which is where Twitter’s search function comes in handy.

A quick look using the Search bar on Twitter will show you exactly what your brand has been missing. From exact matches to misspelling your own name, it’s easy to keep your eye out for lot of indirect brand mentions. You can even take it one step further and simply filter data based on keywords, locations and language that you know relate to your business. So even if customers aren’t tweeting your brand name, but are tweeting about you, you can still catch almost every issue.

Did you know that 96% of untagged brand mentions go unanswered? If a customer wants an answer from your business, their best bet is to directly contact them with a question. But those who aren’t using your Twitter handle are some of the most important people to connect with. Whether they have chosen to miss out the @ handle intentionally, or if they simply forgot, those customers had something to say (good or bad) and that demands action.

Negative Mentions

The majority of the time, when a customer contacts you via Twitter, it turns out to be negative. Whether it be a product issue, a problem with a member of staff in store or a late delivery, the list of possibilities is endless. And if that customer doesn’t @ mention you, and it gets lost in the social media sphere, you might only find out about it when it goes viral.

Some of the biggest businesses have fallen to the curse of indirect mentions and missed out on crucial engagement opportunities that could have completely changed the view of the customer.

Ocado missed out on two chances to salvage their customer-business relationship, when customers didn’t @ mention them in their tweets.

Ocado could have contacted this customer to make alternate arrangements, without them having to look elsewhere. Especially when the fact this customer asked for help means more and more people would find out about Ocado’s slip up.

With the second customer, again they could have responded and offered their next delivery free of charge, or at least apologized. Both opportunities were missed.

The worst thing you can do with a negative tweet is ignore it. Even if what happens after the tweet is sent is the worst thing imaginable, you need to say something. You’re only more likely to make the customer upset, and perhaps tweet about you not responding, which is not the kind of marketing any business wants.

To stay on top of these negative indirect mentions, it is important to keep your eye on keywords specific to your brand and your brand name without the @ symbol, and to include spelling mistakes too.

Positive Mentions

Now, it’s not all negative in the world of indirect mentions. In fact, many people tweet businesses with positive feedback and happy stories, but simply don’t follow the business or forgot to tag. And who doesn’t want to celebrate your business’s successes, even if it is only making a customer happy by getting their parcel there super-fast or a particular member of staff going the extra mile? In a world of so many complaints, it is vital the happy moments are shared to the world.

Here could have been a perfect opportunity for both Missguided and Zara to interact with this blogger to perhaps promote her blog post or even offer a discount code for blogging about their clothes, but because she didn’t @ mention them, they failed to pick up on it.

Debenhams perfectly show how you can interact with positive indirect mentions. After being mentioned alongside many other high street retailers, they were the only one to respond and therefore are most likely to have improved that customer’s opinion of the brand. Even though this tweet wasn’t 100% positive, it wasn’t negatively affecting the brand, so engaging with this kind of interaction is hugely important to change the view to positive.

Chance to Generate New Customers

Watching relevant keywords and hashtags can also be a great way to create new relationships with users who aren’t already customers. Companies who engage with tweets which have no relation to their brand are much more likely to increase their customer base. Imagine how special you’d feel if you tweeted about needing a dress for a party and Topshop replied with a friendly non-sales response.

Tesco are one of the champions when it comes to interacting with any tweet they can, helping boost their brand awareness across Twitter and showcasing their fun personality they are so well known for.

It can be easy to simply use social media to interact with any queries that come directly to your business, in fact many businesses still do! But brand awareness is bigger than replying to direct mentions and you should be able to engage with any tweet involving you, whether that be a tagged mention or a misspelling of your brand’s name.

About the Author

Elena Lockett works for FM Outsource, who provide outsourcing solutions for businesses of all sizes across customer services, digital marketing and IT development.

Simply by posting a comment on Twitter, customer opinion can now reach thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people in the space of minutes. Unfortunately, if that comment is negative, the more likely it is to be re-tweeted and spread far and wide across the internet.

According to a recent article by Social Times, many companies are failing to adequately address the concerns their customers are posting on social media, citing poor response times and a lack of understanding or appreciation of the problem as being the main issues.

So, if you want to connect with your customers on Twitter, here are my top tips to getting it right.

It’s all about engagement

Just because you can’t see you customers face-to-face, it’s important to make an effort to get to know them. Social media is, after all “social”; it’s all about interaction and communication.

The more you interact with your customers online, the better your relationship will be. So if someone sends you a tweet, reply, and, more importantly, don’t take three days to do it. If someone retweets your message, thank them and strike up a conversation; they’re much more likely to start following what you do more closely if they think you care. You can start your following in a massive way to hire the growth service. You can do it county wise. For instance, you can buy USA Twitter followers if you stay there.

It’s important to react to all the posts you see, not just the negative ones. Positivity generates positivity, so always spread the good news too. And not just yours, your customer’s too.

It’s all about the timing

Customer Service is all about timing.The main issue with complaint handling on social media seems to be the time it takes to get a response. Many negative situations have grown out of all proportion simply because the customer didn’t get a timely response.

Twitter is a real-time medium, so it’s no good responding to something a week after the original comment was posted. If you were in a shop and complained to one of the staff members, you wouldn’t expect them to get back to you two hours later; you’d want a response there and then.

Treat social media the same way; monitor what’s being said and when, and make sure you get on top of the situation as quickly as possible. We’ve seen a number of potentially damaging conversations ending on a positive note, simply because of the rapid response time.

It’s all about what you say

Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so providing a comprehensive response to a customer query or complaint is clearly not possible. However, opening up a line of communication is all that’s required at this stage, so a simple “we’re sorry to hear that, how can we put it right” is usually enough to get the conversation going in a more positive direction.

Although you may not want others to see your conversation, you have to remember that the original complaint is already out there and there’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well let the world know you’re doing your best to put things right. Other users may want to follow the conversation to see how you handle it – another opportunity to get a positive result if it’s done properly.

Some conversations are indeed better kept private, but just as customers hate being passed from department to department over the phone, they don’t take to kindly to being given the run-around online, so trying to keep the communication on one platform is the best plan.

If you really need to take it “off air”, it’s worth bearing in mind that Twitter is going to increase the number of characters possible in direct messages to 10,000, so you can always follow each other and try to resolve the situation that way.

As with everything social media related, it’s about communication, communication, and then communication.

It’s all about understanding

Seeing a negative comment about your business on Twitter is never pleasant and it’s easy to take offense and jump right in there with a response, but my advice would be one word; DON’T!

It’s worth taking the time to get to the root of the problem and not just read the complaint and then tweet. Customers often complain in the heat of the moment – it’s almost a knee-jerk reaction at times – and what they actually moan about is not the main reason they were dissatisfied in the first place.

Open up the dialogue and find out what the real problem is. If you take the time at this point, the resolution will be much quicker in the long run, trust me. And, going back to the first point, it’ll really help with your customer engagement.

It’s all about making it personal

I actually saw a response to a customer complaint on Twitter last week that simply said “Please take a look at our FAQ page for the answer to your problem”

Fantastic! I bet that customer really feels important now!

Creating a great customer experience is all about making it personal, and that applies to online service too. You have to remember that every customer is unique, with their own reasons for using your business and their very own reasons for not being happy. Treating them all the same will not endear you too them. You have to take the time to craft an individual response to what is, after all an experience that is unique to that customer.

It’s all about showing that you care

As one businessman quoted last week “It’s only one customer, we’ve got millions to deal with, we can’t respond to everyone individually” Well, I see his point, but ignore that single complain at your peril. Social media has the ability to send it viral and before you know it, those millions of other customers will also know how bad your service is – not from the original complaint (as that might be a flash in the pan) but by the way you handle it.

Let’s face it, your business would be nothing without your customers and you need to look after every single one of them if you don’t want them all to disappear. Ignore one and you could soon find you have none!

Great customer service is perhaps the most important tool one can use to generate not only new but repeat business through improving customer loyalty and retention. Since so much business is virtual in this day and age, you have to make sure that you know how to respond if things start to go wrong. Clearly, you can’t prevent people from posting negative comments in the first place.

How you deal with them can make a big difference in the overall experience, and can make or break your online reputation. Social Media is a powerful tool. Make sure you use it wisely.

By all means use Twitter to handle your customer service, but make sure you do it properly to ensure complaints are handled correctly and in a timely manner.