15 TipsFor Small Social Customer Care Teams

Here’s what your small customer care team can do to have a big impact on social

Clearly display your business hours

o Small teams usually have limited

operating hours. Make sure your

business hours are clearly noted on

your Facebook page, Twitter bio or

Instagram bio, and stick to them!

Compare your current

hours to your incoming

volume hourly rates. Do

you need to expand or

adjust your customer

support hours?

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1

Enable sound notifications

o If your responsibilities are spread

across departments or platforms,

the "dun-DUN" sound will ensure

you are notified when a new

message enters your queue.

Set up custom away

states to better measure

where else you are

spending your time. Can

any of that work be

delegated to another

individual or department

with more resources?

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2

Centralize your go-to resources

o Make use of a centralized resource

center. Keep it updated with

necessary links, articles and info

that team members can use during

support interactions.

Empower your

managers and team

leads to update the

resource center in

real-time during a crisis

or irregular operations.

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3

Get into a cadence

o To improve productivity and

accountability, find a routine that

works for your team and stick with

it. Split shifts between days, check

your queues once an hour when

you're short on time, or run weekly

reports for stakeholders.

Busy weekend? Get all

hands on deck every

Monday morning to crush

the over-the-weekend

queue for a more

productive week.

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4

Keep it consistent

o Make sure your customers are

getting the same answer to their

questions and concerns regardless

of where they are talking to you

(whether through social, phone,

email, etc.).

Communicate with other

customer-facing

individuals at your

organization. Do you all

agree on your brand voice

and share the same

customer philosophies?

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5

Resolve issues where they begin

o Keep customers within their

selected channel to create quicker

resolution and a more seamless

experience for both customers and

team members.

Use technology to securely verify

customers’ information. You’ll

shave time off each customer

request by securely transmitting

and storing this info within the

conversation history, and will

provide a truly effortless

experience for the customer.

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6

Document your work

o Keep a record of your team’s

workflow, as well as any

modifications to it. If one team

member leaves for vacation, you

will better understand how and why

your workflow is what it is.

Audit your team’s workflow and

highlight areas where you are

succeeding or need

improvement. This will help your

small team manage incoming

volume to the best of your ability.

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7

Automate all things

o To save time on every social

engagement, triage, route or tag

conversations via keywords. Use

automations whenever possible to

make things easier on your team.

Set up an automation to

automatically bring pending

conversations back to the queue

after a given amount of time. By

doing this, you can surprise and

delight with proactive follow-up,

without the extra work.

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8

Stay focused, filter out spam

o If the amount of incoming volume is

overwhelming, build rules around

conversations that don't need to be

seen. Filter out spam through

automations based on message

structure and keywords.

Keep track of conversations (type

and quantity) that are removed

from the queue via rules or

automations. Use this data for

improved reporting and

conversation tracking.

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9

Be methodical with a first-in-first-out approach

o During business hours, handle

conversations in a first-in-first-out

fashion to prevent some customers

from waiting longer than others.

Have team members focus on

crushing urgent and important

conversations first by using a

first-in-first-out approach within a

particular topic.

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10

Prioritize urgent conversations

o Apply topics to conversations to

surface higher priority messages,

temporarily filter out other

conversations as needed, or route

requests to the correct department.

Have one team member from

another customer-facing team

occasionally jump into the queue

to handle conversations within a

topic that falls under their realm.

This increases the number of

engagements you will be able to

handle and stakeholder buy-in as

more agents are involved.

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11

Label VIPs for priority support

o Are your VIPs your executives,

loyalty/rewards members, or social

influencers? When applicable, apply

a VIP label and bump the

conversations to the top of the

queue, no matter which order

you're sorting.

Create reminders to celebrate

exciting moments like birthdays

and anniversaries with your VIPs.

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12

In order to scale, do things that scale

o Plan for both the growth of your team

and the growth of your company.

Familiarize yourself with agent

performance metrics and create

baseline goals and KPIs. Are customers

asking for something you don’t yet

support? Track their conversations and

use those insights when your company

is ready to make those changes.

Ask your sales, product, and

marketing teams what kinds of

customer insights they're

interested in seeing. Work with

them on increasing resources for

your team by helping them

obtain these insights.

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13

Turn insights into action

o Are there certain times of the year

when it’s worth adding another team

member? Track trends over time and

report on these metrics to

stakeholders and other executives to

make a case for needed resources.

Gather customer

feedback/sentiment for a

quarter. Bring these reports to

other teams and present

suggestions internally on behalf

of your customers.

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14

Integrate with other platforms and CRMs

o By connecting your customer service

technology with your CRM records,

your systems can begin to talk with

each other and cut out human error

and time spent switching between

applications.

Provide a secure means of

transmitting customers’

personally identifiable

information straight to your CRM

via a secure authentication

process.

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15

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