Social Media and Customer Service

It's no secret that the majority of all potential or current customers are on social media. More than likely your business has a page or a profile on social media. Why not? It helps with search rankings, branding and customer service..or does it?

Social media can absolutely help with customer service if you have trained the employee who manages it to see the channel as a customer service tool. The following is a recent example where the customer was completely failed by social media.

As someone who helps connecting others, I serve on numerous committees of nonprofits where my role is the community liaison. In this particular situation, I was trying to connect a professional organization with graduate college students. As you know if you network in college you have a greater chance of getting a position closer to graduation. I contacted numerous colleges in Middle Tennessee via Facebook messenger. I asked the same question to every college I contacted which was who do I contact that would be a liaison between the students and me so I can share information about the organization and events.

College A answered 48 hours later: Contact our business management department.

Hmm….ok, so I went to the website and there were 15 people listed in their business management department. Oh, and there was also a list of people in the graduate studies business management department. Did they expect me to contact every single one?

College B was much like college A except that they shared a link to the career center page. It would have been great but there were no contacts on there and no obvious way to find out who those contacts were. When I asked them to share contacts they shared a contact page which included quite a few people. When I inquired about who would handle graduate students I was told to call the school between normal business hours. Again, was I expected to call all of those people? If the person handling social media didn't know the answer and couldn't be bothered with the research to help me why would someone at the school know if I called?

College C: Responded immediately that they were going to research and get back to me by the end of the day. 30 minutes later I got the name and email address of a contact.

There is a very bad taste in my mouth from my dealings with College A. I did follow up by asking the name of a specific person to which they never responded. It's a good thing I'm not looking to go back to school because I would have dismissed College A from my list immediately. College B tried so they can have some benefit of a doubt but they lost credibility.

How does this pertain to business? As the customer demographic changes technology will come more into play. Customers will contact your company when it is convenient for them and where. The majority of customers are always on social media and will expect that they will receive good service. Companies like Nissan, AT&T, Chevrolet, Asurion and Taco Bell all have social media customer relations departments.

Customer Experience Expert, Donna Drehmann of Listen, Learn Live spoke about this topic at an event I was at. She said to always go the extra mile and treat every customer like it's their birthday, with praise and recognition. Can a response on Facebook messenger or Twitter Direct Message make or break your business? Possibly, if that response goes viral!

Not every company has the resources to have a social media customer support team but every company has the resources to train the person or persons who handle social media on how to respond to customer questions and proper customer service etiquette.

Originally published June 30, 2016.