How Social Media Revolutionizes Business' Ability to Serve Customers

Social media has changed the landscape of how businesses operate, and this is especially apparent when looking at the evolution of customer care.

For decades, customer care relied heavily on consumers calling into support lines and waiting for the next available agent to provide assistance. In fact, a TalkTo and ResearchNow study found the average person will spend 43 days of their life on hold, and that one out of three people who hang up on businesses will never call back.

Social media allows companies to respond to customer queries promptly and personally, which is why most consumers prefer to receive support through social media over all other channels.

How has social media revolutionized your ability to serve customers?

Find out how social media has changed customer care, and implement these four strategies to improve your customer service experience.

With call-in customer support, consumers are the ones who wait. Consumers wait for their call to be transferred, they wait for help to be available, or for an answer to be found. Consumers wait by the phone for an indeterminate amount of time, which can be extremely frustrating.

Social media flips the script when it comes to customer care. Customers can post their questions or comments, then resume their daily activities without interruption. The business may follow-up immediately, but the consumer can choose to respond whenever they’d like. Companies now wait on consumers, rather than consumers waiting on companies. To learn how your brand can deliver the experience they expect, read our Digital Customer Care Playbook.

Proactive customer service is one of the most remarkable revolutions to come from the growth of social media over the past decade.

Prior to social media, customer service was strictly reactive. Businesses received comments, questions, or concerns and would attempt to respond as quickly as possible.

Social media allows companies to find and address potential problems before they’re submitted to support teams by utilizing social listening. Rather than waiting for issues to be reported, businesses can read industry or brand-relevant conversations to see what audiences are saying and identify opportunities to address potential issues before they become more widespread.

Brands like Microsoft use social media to publish content that answers common questions, which allows the care team to spend more time helping customers instead of continually answering the same queries.

Social media lets businesses engage with customers through meaningful and authentic interactions. Most call centers rely on strict scripts to address customer issues, and the conversation ends when the problem is resolved.

With social media, brands can curate content that showcases their unique personality and nurture relationships by extending conversations beyond the initial issue.

(Source: Tesco Mobile's Twitter)

A study from SurveyAnyplace found the response rate for telephone surveys has been declining over the past two decades, with only 18% of people opting to provide feedback over the phone. It appears few people are inclined to stay on the line to answer additional questions after resolving an issue with a customer support representative.

Social media allows businesses to collect feedback faster than ever and in interesting ways. As we mentioned earlier, organizations can use social listening to collect feedback related to their products, services, or industry without asking customers questions.

Many companies also choose to make collecting feedback a core part of their content strategy through social polls and question posts. People love participating to share their opinions, and this practice makes it easy to collect feedback while driving audience engagement.

Mix in fun polls like those shown below that are interesting and relevant to further showcase your unique brand voice.

(Source: Dunkin' Donuts and Airbnb's Twitter pages)

Learn how Khoros Intelligence can help you collect audience feedback in real-time to generate insights that foster affinity and accelerate sales.

Get expert tips and advice on how to improve your customer service with our Digital Customer Care Playbook, or contact us to see how we can help you revolutionize the way you serve customers with our simple to use social media software.

Our powerful software allows your business to create meaningful interactions by providing prompt and personal responses to customer comments and inquiries. Engage with your audience to nurture relationships and create customers for life.

Request a demo to see our social media software in action and take the first step towards a new and improved customer service experience.