10 best practices for social support

a publication of

BEST PRACTICES10 FOR SOCIAL SUPPORT

10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 1

INTRODUCTION

As social media has evolved into a pervasive way of doing business across multiple

departments, a growing number of companies are starting to realize that they have to be

where their customers are in order to deliver great support. This means maintaining an

active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc, as well as having their own customer

community dedicated to supporting their customers.

No matter where you’re meeting your customers to hear feedback, answer questions,

and address issues, there are some best practices that will help steer you and your

social media and support team in the right direction. Keep reading to learn how you can

maximize your effectiveness and leverage the collaborative nature of social to deliver

great customer service at a lower cost.

Contents

INTRODUCTION ............................................1

1 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING .......2

2 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS .......................3

3 BUY YOURSELF TIME. .............................4

4 IMPORT SOCIAL MENTIONS INTO YOUR COMMUNITY. .......................5

5 IDENTIFY ADVOCATES AND CHAMPIONS ......................................6

6 HAVE A PLAN FOR ESCALATION ...........7

7 TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL ................8

8 BUILD LOTS OF ENTRY POINTS ..........9

9 ANALYZE, ANALYZE, ANALYZE ........10

10 LET YOUR PERSONALITY SHINE! ......11

CONCLUSION ..........................................12


1 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

This may seem like an obvious one, but you can’t provide good social support if you’re not

really aware of the issues. Sometimes your customers will come to your official support

channels or social presences, but often they’ll just be in the great big world of social—on

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, and yes, your customer community—talking about your

brand. If you’re not there to hear what they’re saying, you’re missing invaluable insight into

pain points.

The good news for your company is that there are a number of listening tools out there

that will help you get the pulse of your market, no matter what your budget or company

size. Don’t forget to do keyword searches for your company, product names, as well as

common misspellings, so you’re hearing what is being said about you, not just to you.

From socialmention and Google Alerts, which are free and easy to set up, to Radian6,

which is costly but robust, to HootSuite, which is a nice, middle-of-the-road alternative,

there is a solution that will meet your budget and needs.

Listening is an essential first step in providing great social support. As an added bonus,

it also can be a great way to pick up on customer advocates who are giving you praise

in social networks, which can be repurposed for marketing content and internal mood

boosting.

Don’t forget to do keyword searches for your company, product names, as well as common misspellings, so you’re hearing what is being said about you, not just to you.


2 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS

Setting the right expectations (both internally and externally) is vital to providing great

social support. Internally, you want to be very clear with your employees about how you’re

expecting them to engage on these networks, if at all. It’s a good idea to have a negativity

plan in place for when they encounter unhappy customers, as well as an escalation plan

so they know when and who to turn messy issues over to. You should also have one clear,

concise place where they can look up hashtags, messaging, and company best practices.

Externally, you want to make sure you’re up front about how responsive you’ll be to

customers. For example, you should post the hours your customers can expect you to

engage, all the channels they can use to reach you, and how quickly they’re likely to wait

before getting a response. Once you set the expectations, you have to deliver on them. It’s

better to tell your audience that you’re only available from 10 am to 3 pm (although this

is not ideal for the 24/7 world of social) than to say you’re always available and respond

within an hour, if it’s blatantly not the case.

Set expectations internally and externally, so your employees and customers have a clear understanding of how to behave and what to expect.


3 BUY YOURSELF TIME.

Social media has undeniably shifted consumers’ expectations. It has sped up the

customer lifecycle, as well as how long they expect to wait before hearing from you after

they ask a question or report a problem. In fact, 42% of people who reach out to you

on social media expect a first response within 60 minutes. That’s not a lot of time to see a

question, find the answer, and close the loop. Succinctly. In 140 characters or less. On

top of all the other work you have. The Get Satisfaction HootSuite integration is designed

to help find and send the right community answer to a customer question in Twitter or

Facebook, but we’ll get to that in our next tip.

While people expect a response almost immediately on social, that doesn’t mean you

have to provide a definitive answer that quickly if one isn’t at your fingertips. A quick,

“Great question, we wonder that too. We’ll look into it & get back to you,” will buy you the

time to find the appropriate answer, work your social media magic to shrink it down to

appropriate Tweet or Wall post size, and respond. Which bring us to our next tip…

42% of people who reach out to you on social media expect a first response within 60 minutes.


4 IMPORT SOCIAL MENTIONS INTO YOUR COMMUNITY.

This has so many benefits it’s hard to know where to start. When you bring content

from a Tweet or Facebook post into your Get Satisfaction community via our HootSuite

integration, you get rid of pesky character limits, turn the fleeting comment into content

that is persistent and searchable, and drive participation into your community.

With the click of a button, you’ll create a new topic in your community based on content

from a Tweet or Facebook Wall post, fully answer the question in the community topic,

then automatically send a Tweet or post back to the user with a link to the answer in the

community. This preserves the content in a persistent way that’s easy for the next person

who has a similar question (as well as Google) to find. An added benefit is the fact the

tool helps you to automatically close the loop with your customers, creating all-around

happiness (and effectiveness) for you and your customers.

Get rid of pesky character limits, turn fleeting social mentions into content that is long-lasting and searchable, and drive social engagement with a customer community.


5 IDENTIFY ADVOCATES AND CHAMPIONS

We know that you can address the questions, needs, and concerns of your customers

all on your own… but with a strong social support strategy, you don’t have to! One of the

biggest perks of social support is it allows you to leverage your most engaged customers

to help each other out on your behalf.

In fact, consumers prefer the opinions of your customers to canned, company-sponsored

responses, so the organic praise of brand advocates is the holy grail of social media

marketing. Your champions are also a great resource to support you when people have

questions or complaints about you on social networks. But first you have to identify and

activate them.

Incentivize these critical customers with Champs programs, web badges, public thanks,

insider information, deals, and coupons. To learn more about the demographics of

specific market segments who are likely to use customer communities and the best ways

you can nurture a relationship with them, check out this infographic.

It will be extremely valuable to take the time to identify and empower your brand

advocates. Even a few great brand advocates can drive customer acquisition and

dramatically reduce your need to respond to support issues (especially after hours when

you’ve called it a day, but your customers are still on social media expecting a response

quickly).

Your customers are on social networks long after you’ve called it a day. Activate your brand advocates for additional 24/7 social support.


6 HAVE A PLAN FOR ESCALATION

No matter how awesome your company, product, and team are, it’s likely that there

will be times when you have a customer reaching out to you online with a question your

social media manager can’t answer, or a complaint they’re not comfortable addressing.

Being transparent in social media means you should always strive to provide as full and

complete an answer as you can from whichever department is most relevant to the

question.

Often this means reaching out to different areas of your company to get them the full

answer they’re looking for. Tricky product questions should be passed along to someone

on the product team to provide a complete answer. Messy PR issues should be handed off

to marketing or PR teams. Occasionally, when things really call for some special attention,

they should be escalated to your executive team.

Before your social media manager is confronted with a sticky situation, have a plan in

place so then know when interactions should be escalated, and to whom. It will help them

feel comfortable doing their job, and will ensure these questions and issues get dealt with

quickly and effectively.

Being transparent in social media often means reaching out to different areas of your company to get your customers the full answer they’re looking for.


7 TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Spontaneous gifts for brand advocates, public recognition, truly going above and beyond

for your customers — however you choose to step up your social game to delight and wow

your customers — social media is a medium that can amplify the excitement created… and

it will.

Empower your team to create moments of awesome for your customers by encouraging

them to send schwag to brand advocates who show you love on Twitter, give public kudos

to especially helpful customers, and otherwise go out of their way to be an awesome

community member. Then sit back and watch the social love flood in!

How do you create moments of “wow” for your customers on social?


8 BUILD LOTS OF ENTRY POINTS

Social media means that your customers are no longer in one, insolated place looking for

your assistance. Customers will come to you on Facebook and Twitter, from your website,

in the comments section of your blog, and in your customer community. Your social

support is only as effective as the entry points to it, so make sure it’s open, inviting, and

easy-to-find!

Get Satisfaction offers widgets that allows you to place entry points to your community

anywhere on your website. Make it easy for your customers to seamlessly bounce from

your website, to your social channels, to your community, and your blog. You should also

have visible links inviting consumers to share your blog content on social channels. The

easier it is for people to find you on social media and share your content there, the more

likely they are to do so. The reach this creates will grow exponentially, so make sure you’re

investing in this area.

Don’t forget, most consumers still go straight to Google to find the answers they’re

looking for, so it’s important to make sure your social support content ranks well! (Not

sure how? Go back and review tip 4)

Your social support is only as effective as the entry points to it, so make sure it’s open, inviting, and easy-to-find!


9 ANALYZE, ANALYZE, ANALYZE

Customer support shouldn’t just be a reaction to a problem. When done well, it can be a

first indication of where things are going wrong, whether it’s a person, product, or feature.

Without data, you won’t know your major pain points, so be sure to capture as much

information as possible about the issues that are vexing your customers.

Good stats to measure: the average customer wait-time for first response and resolution,

the platforms they’re using most to contact you to get help, the number of votes or page

views a particular community topic has, and the number of support questions answered

by Champions.

Here at Get Satisfaction we understand the importance of great data analysis, which is

why we’ve teamed up with GoodData to bring you Community Health Analytics 2.0. There

are also a number of other online tools that will help you track your various social stats.

Don’t just react with your social support. Proactively identify pain points and places where you can improve.


10 LET YOUR PERSONALITY SHINE!

Everybody always talks about being authentic on social media. The best way to ensure

you sound authentic (like a human—not a robot) is to say your response out loud to your

coworker. If it comes out of your mouth feeling natural, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll sound

that way to your reader as well.

Depending on your brand, feel free to sprinkle emoticons and words like “yikes,” “oops,”

and “yay,” to give it a little extra flavor. You can also sign your tweets or posts with your

name or initials to give it a more human touch. And when in doubt, a little empathy and

honesty (a la “I am so sorry that’s happening to you. Looks like a bug our engineers are

working out right now. Will keep you posted”) can go a long way towards reminding your

customers that you’re a human over there, and you’re working to fix their issues as quickly

as possible.

Get out there and be you! Your customers are going to love your unique social mediaisms. Trust me. ^HJ


CONCLUSION

Social Support is not a passing fad… customers have come to expect that companies

will be there for them in a more social and authentic way. And that’s a good thing for

you and your brand! At the end of the day, nobody wants to feel like the source of his or

her frustration is being handled by a robot, PR team, or (worst of all) a black hole. Social

media means that support issues that are handled poorly can attract a lot more negative

attention than ever before. But the reverse is also true. Support issues that are tackled

proactively, responsibly, and transparently provide great opportunities for your brand to

shine.

And don’t forget, a customer community will help you leverage your customers to help

each other, transform fleeting social mentions into persistent, discoverable content,

and will enable you to place entry points into your community wherever your customers

are — on your website, social networks, mobile, and search. Add our integrations with

great partners like HootSuite and GoodData to the mix, and you have everything you need

for an intelligent, easy to manage, easy to evaluate social support plan.

Interested in learning more about how a Get Satisfaction customer community can help you deliver excellent,

low-cost social support? Give us a call at:

877-339-3997to schedule a demo,

or visit us athttps://getsatisfaction.com/

corp/solutions/support/index.

10 best practices for social support

Technology

place entry

entry points

social media

social support

social networks

support issues

personality

common misspellings