Doing Customer Support on Social Media Right

By Donald Smithon

Customer care support is one of the most important aspects of business - ask any business owner. Not only does it help solve issues and help let you know if you're actually doing a good job relating to your customers, but it affects your business's overall branding as well.

With everyone on social media, including you and your potential customers, it makes perfect sense to invest in making sure your customer support on social media is in top shape. Apart from the basic customer support pointers, there are some tips that are particularly useful in the age of social media. Here they are.

Indulge Your Customers in a Little Humor

While a business may want to keep things as formal or "business-y" as possible in dealing with customers, it's important to note that on social media, things don't have to be as formal.

Aside from using a friendly tone with them, getting a little humorous with your customers every now and then is a great way to relate with them. Younger audiences, in particular, are appreciative of brands approaching them in such a way as it goes to show that the brand doesn't just care about getting a sale off of them, but actually want to relate to their customer base.

More importantly, it helps keep tension at bay in certain situations and may help your customer feel calmer while you're still figuring things out (don't overdo it, though, especially with angry customers!)

Actually Listen to Your Customers

This should be an automatic response to interaction with customers, but a lot of times, business or brand pages tend to keep on engaging on the same practices, whether it's with the customer support methods themselves or with feedback on the brand/its products/services.

Don't forget: social media is an extremely convenient platform for you to gain firsthand points for improvement from your customers, and if you don't take them into account when re-strategizing or evaluating your performance, it would be quite the missed opportunity, not to mention quite a turn off for your customers to see that you didn't pay attention to their feedback.

It's not all about the negative stuff, either. Social media also helps you gauge which aspects of your work you're doing right, so you have an idea of what could potentially sell as well in the future.

Invest in Quality Services

Customer support is such a crucial part of any successful business, which is why it's important not to compromise on the quality of work you're putting into it.

From keeping up with live customer support as well as making sure things are kept organized, good customer support staff can spell a world of difference as to how well-oiled your business is. Imagine getting the wrong people for the job - aside from taking care of the business itself, you'd have to make up for their slip-ups even though you're paying them.

For a healthier business (and business owner), it'll prove more than worth it to leave things to tried and tested support teams that'll help you build a great relationship with your customers.

This is only the beginning; there are still a lot of other factors to consider when looking to improve    customer care support. It's clear that there's no one-way solution around it, but there are definitely a lot of controllable variables that are under your control.