6 Ways to Use Social Listening for Customer Service
Many don’t know how to use social listening to improve customer service. This article is here to help you understand social listening and exactly how to use it for better customer service.
Posted 3 months ago
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Guest PostPosted 3 months ago
Listen—then serve.
It could be that straightforward only in an alternate universe. If social listening for customer service were that effortless, you’d never have to read this blog post. 🥲
Listening and serving customers on social media has become a mainstay practice. In fact, 24% of businesses have been practicing social media listening for 10+ years, and 61% have been doing it for five years or more. Many companies might even claim it is pivotal to their business success. And it truly is. People spend hours daily on social networks, making them a large part of their lives. That’s why many brands try to go partially or, sometimes, entirely social in customer service delivery.
Still, many don’t know how to use social listening to improve customer service. This article is here to help you understand social listening and exactly how to use it for better customer service. Trust us, your customers and your boss will thank you for it.
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Types of Social Listening You Should Know to Serve Customers Better
You might have heard businesses chattering about the aim of social listening in customer service—to provide advice and assistance to leads and customers by scanning and analyzing social media channels. In due course, this contributes to a more positive customer experience across social platforms.
However, the story about its types (reactive and proactive) often remains untold.
Reactive social media listening for customer service
This social listening type is as easy as tying your shoelaces. You simply react. Your reaction (action or inaction) will be triggered by your customers’ thoughts and behaviors on social media.
Suppose you capture their wishes or demands. You may either ignore them (inaction) or satisfy their appetites (action).
For example:
Glossier saw a flood of social media posts from customers grumbling about the limited edition of Ultralips. Some confessed that it saddened them greatly. So, Glossier reacted via Instagram: You asked, so we made them permanent!
The brand brought Cranberry and Pony (formerly Pisces) Ultralips back to the Glossier stores, now permanently.
Proactive social media listening for customer service
Have you ever tried listening to social media proactively, not reactively?
As Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, expertly stated, “We’ve been used to react (faster, smarter, more creatively, and so on). But what should sit higher in our task priorities is to ‘proact’: analyze social media searches, anticipate all possible concerns, and work on those before they even bud.”
For example:
While predicting numerous “how-to?” questions, the Ninja Patches team creates step-by-step video tutorials (mostly TikToks and YouTube shorts) on applying custom patches to the apparel with an iron, Cricut machine, or other methods.
Such a proactive social media content strategy helps them reduce the volume of customer service inquiries by answering them before they appear in customers’ minds.
How to Use Social Listening for Outstanding Customer Service
Accelerate your response times
Listen—then reply.
Or better: Listen and reply ASAP.
When planning a social listening strategy for customer service, you should start with your average response time. It holds considerable weight for consumers: 23% expect replies within one or two hours, and 16% anticipate those almost instantly, within minutes, on social channels.
Looking at these numbers, you’d definitely want to speed up your social media response times.
Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO at MIRA Safety, outlines his strategic approach: “Continually ask your team, ‘Can we respond to customers faster on social platforms?’ Even if high response speed is in your brand’s genome, refocusing on being ‘omnipotent-quick’ can make a huge difference and transform your social media customer service.”
Via comments
When monitoring activity and engagement with Instagram posts, the MIRA Safety team noticed that the customer was experiencing an issue while placing the order and answered instantly in the comment area.
Via DMs
Check out how the MIRA Safety team jumped into an Instagram DM roughly two hours after the potential buyer had inquired about international shipping.
However, there’s an advanced trick for improving your response times in DMs: AI customer service with a chatbot.
For example:
Hahnair Airlines uses a Facebook messenger bot to generate B2B leads (travel agencies) and B2C ones (private travelers) and handle customer service inquiries.
See your “blanks” through your customers’ eyes
Thanks to social media listening, you can easily catch your audience’s voices, from the quietest whispers to the loudest talks, to refine your customer service strategy afterward. Using comparison charts, pie charts, or statistical infographics, you can visualize specific suggestions and sentiment trends from your customers. Pay attention to their specific complaints and suggestions and monitor negative sentiment about your customer service.
For example:
Here’s what a customer tweeted about @HotpointUK: Absolutely disgusted with @HotpointUK and their customer service.
Meanwhile, take the following tip from Jesse Hanson, Content Manager at Online Solitaire & World of Card Games: “Since customers are not always open to sharing feedback in public and do that rather reluctantly, add elements of interactivity to stimulate them to share their feedback. These may be interactive polls, quizzes, or gamified activities to make this experience fun and engaging on social media.”
For example:
Sephora uses social listening to collect customers’ wants and needs with a fill-in-the-blank activity: If Sephora stores also had a _____ inside, my life would be complete.
Quickly resolve customer service crises
What if you deliver poor customer service, and all the disappointment, negativity, and outrage get poured on your brand via social media? (Remember that tweet about HotpointUK?) In an instance with a courier service one bad experience can quickly escalate online, damaging trust and putting your reputation at risk.
Let’s learn how to use social listening to deal with customer service scandals.
Before anything else, Jonathan Feniak, General Counsel at LLC Attorney, suggests gathering a crisis communication team and assigning roles. “You must plan your crisis communication strategy long before the customer service crisis spreads over social networks. Train your risk managers to communicate with disappointed clients publicly and in direct messages on social media.”
Then, follow these actionable steps shared by Jonathan Feniak to manage a social media crisis boiling around your customer service mistake:
- Respond swiftly and transparently (avoid generic phrases)
- Show empathy and understanding
- Apologize if necessary
- Take responsibility for your flops
- Run a post-crisis analysis and list takeaways
- Continuously monitor customer sentiment and feedback during and after the crisis
- Address remaining concerns
For example:
When PayPal’s clients faced troubles with the service, the brand apologized for the rise in customer service wait times and responded to every concern in the comments section on Facebook.
Recognize and value positive feedback
Do you usually thank people for positive shout-outs or comments about your customer service on social media? Or do you focus only on negative reviews?
Volodymyr Shchegel, VP of Engineering at MacKeeper, believes this is something companies often forget when leveraging social listening in customer service. He says, “Never leave those who endorse your brand and praise your customer service unnoticed. Express gratitude and make every customer feel valued with a personal thanks note. Social media monitoring can help you do that effectively.”
Once you spot positive remarks or comments about your services, use client appreciation phrases like these:
- Thanks for your positive feedback.
- Grateful for your trust and loyalty.
- We appreciate the love you give us and thank you in return for being our loyal fan.
- Words can’t express our gratitude.
- Thank you for sticking with us.
For example:
Look at how First Republic replied to the happy client who referred to their excellent customer service in the LinkedIn post: thank you for your kind words. We are thankful for all of our clients and their continued support.
Personalize
When asked to share the best tactic, Reyansh Mestry, Head of Marketing at TopSource Worldwide, said, “One of the primary ways of using social listening for customer service that seems critical to me (although apparent) is to personalize social media interactions with potential and existing customers.”
Reyansh Mestry also gives two fundamental rules for personalization.
Rule #1. Personalize with names.
When you interact with customers on social media, call them by their real names (or usernames) and indicate your name, too, so as not to sound impersonal and humanize your brand instead.
Rule #2. Redirect your conversation to a DM (whenever appropriate).
This way, you’ll take a more personalized approach and preserve the customer’s privacy.
Let’s look at the following example.
The FedEx manager referred to the customer by name (Claudio), indicated a personal name (Susana), and asked to share specific details about the issue in a Facebook DM.
Use tools to keep a closer watch on trends and vibes.
While it comes at the end, this is a no-go-without set of social media monitoring tools. These are all the necessary instruments for your business to stay tuned to your customers and set up your customer service like clockwork:
- Flick
- Brand24
- Keyhole
- LOOQME
- YouScan
- Sprout Social
- Digimind
For instance, with Flick, you can understand which Instagram content serves your customers best and which falls flat when performing this task.
On top of that, Leigh McKenzie, Community Advocate at Traffic Think Tank, recommends tracking hashtags and brand mentions. He warns, “Even a single negative hashtag about your customer service can devastate your social media reputation. So, my advice would be to track those thoroughly and consistently.”
He advises brands to use a hashtag tracker and regularly inspect social platforms for the following hashtags near the #CompanyName or @CompanyName mention:
- #terriblecustomerservice
- #customerservicefailure
- #failedcustomerservice
- #horriblecustomerservice
- #badcustomerservice, etc.
For example:
If you monitor TikTok for the #qatarairways and #awfulcustomerservice hashtags, you’ll find this post from a pissed-off customer.
Luckily, you’ve already learned how to cope with social media crises like this.
Skyrocket Your Customer Service with Social Listening and Flick for Instagram!
Wave goodbye to meaningless Instagram posts that don’t cater to your target audience. Make them purposeful and proactive with Flick’s AI Social Media Manager and advanced Instagram analytics.
Use social media listening reactively and proactively to hit the stratosphere in your customer service excellence. Your Flick mission is ready for a soft launch—start for free today!
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