How to use social media to boost CX

"Social media is about people! Not about your business. Provide for the people, and the people will provide for you.” - Matt Goulart

Every successful business today must understand their customer wants and needs and constantly work hard to fulfill them. Social media has connected people and helped brands improve their relationships with their audience.

According to Invespcro, above 80% of customers use social media to engage with their favorite brands. 69% of US residents directly message companies on these platforms, and 84% accepted that they received a faster response. Responding to customer queries faster can increase their advocacy by approximately 25%.

Business can improve their customer experience by facilitating a two-way interaction with customers at a more personal level. Therefore, the impact of social media on CX is undeniable compared to other methods of providing customer service.

This blog will discuss how to use social media to boost customer experience and what steps to take to leverage social channels for improved CX.

Why it is important to use social media to boost customer experience

Today's digital age ensures that brands should develop mutually beneficial relationships with their customers. Social media is vital in building strong bonds and generating more business leads.

Over 4.26 billion individuals used social media globally in 2021, which is expected to rise to over six billion by 2027. You can cater to a huge audience if your business has an excellent social media presence!

Social media is a platform where people share their opinions on almost everything happening worldwide. Similarly, it is a convenient forum for customers to provide feedback on a purchased product or a service received. Consumers believe other consumers. They rely largely on what they see and read; any positive comment can reinforce your brand image.

Keep your consumers engaged with an online survey, encourage feedback, provide timely responses, and assure them that they are being heard! When you deliver a better social media CX, you improve the overall brand experience and increase leads to your website, generating sales and a constant flow of revenue.

Previously, consumers shared their queries via phone calls or emails, and it was a long-drawn process, often taking days to get a proper resolution. But today's customers need instant solutions, self-servicing options, and an omnichannel experience. Today's customers are highly vocal, whether it is showing their displeasure or happiness, and you don't want to irritate them.

Brands have various alternatives for providing customer care, but social media is the one that consumers choose. From 2020 to 2021, the number of consumers who favored using social messaging for customer assistance increased by 110%.

What social media changed in customer service?

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is essential for any business to make your customers happy and engaged with your business for the long term. It refers to the set of processes companies must adopt to oversee customer engagements and manage user relationships with the brand.

Social media has changed a business's way of connecting with its audience and improving customer service, leading to better customer retention.

1. People get different options to reach customer service

To connect with their brands, consumers can communicate via different channels like phone, email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Users today prefer convenience, comfort, and a personalized experience, and social media wins on all these points.

2. It can resolve others' problems.

Customers feel happy to post how their problems were resolved. It further helps others with similar issues and looks for a way out on public forums.

Brands can leverage it as a self-service method and showcase brand loyalty.

3. Businesses can respond faster

Customer service experts can respond to a huge audience through social media and ensure fast responses. Plus, they can post ways to resolve common issues and direct consumers to FAQs, self-support options, or private social media conversations.

Automated messages and chatbots can help resolve common issues.

4. Businesses can share meaningful content, news, and updates

Any changes in the business operations, news, or product launch can be updated on social media. It helps send out one message to billions of audiences at once.

How to improve customer experience on social media

Multiple strategies can help you improve customer experience management on social media. Some of them are listed below.

Know your audience

The first step to improving customer experience is knowing your audience. Put yourself in their position and consider what you want or expect from a brand.

Your social presence informs the audience about who they are following, what you sell, how to discuss their problems, and how frequently you respond to queries.

A poor customer experience can create a negative brand image in the minds of your target audience. Clients who are tech-savvy are eager to provide feedback about brands on social media so that others can learn and stay informed.

You can understand the client's position from the interactions on social media and, if needed, reformulate strategies accordingly.

Closely monitor feedbacks

Client feedback allows you to correct past errors. Social media is a platform for live discussions in which a large number of people broadcast their concerns and provide feedback on their brands.

A few ways how to collect client feedbacks are:

Interacting with customers directly by

 

replying to their comments

 

and sending direct messages.

Running a contest

 

on social media and arranging gifts for everyone participating.

Arrange a poll

 

and send direct messages to each audience, asking them to participate in it

Create an online survey

 

and offer discount codes or gift cards to the participants

Use different social media tools to capture

 

comments, hashtags, keywords

, direct or indirect mentions, etc., relevant to your brand.

The goal is to create a brand image for your clients, capture and analyze their feedback, and use methods to improve CX.

Remember, your consumers don't like receiving unnecessary ads and promotional messages. Instead, make your content interactive while showing your brand's human side. You can also get a microscopic view of your customer expectations and provide personalized solutions.

Fast response to complaints and queries

Clients on social media expect their brand to be available 24/7 in responding to queries and complaints.

According to Convince & Convert, 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within an hour. If you use Facebook, you must respond even faster because your response time rate is publicly displayed on your Facebook business page.

Most customers don't like a brand with poor customer service. Thus, your social media team must handle client queries, reviews, complaints, and comments efficiently.

Poor CX can damage your reputation through negative word of mouth and bad reviews on social media platforms.

You must deploy a social media-centric marketing team that can improve the customer experience system. Implementing an integrated timeline view of the omnichannel experience helps your team to view the history of interactions happening across multiple platforms in chronological order and respond to messages by understanding their context.

Use the power of technology

Most successful companies worldwide are investing in developing social customer support through technology. Every business owners need to be technologically compliant to set up a successful business, especially when using social media and staying in line with the emerging trends in customer service.

Data analytics, augmented reality, omnichannel support, live chat, and cyber security measures can help to improve customer experience and brand advocacy.

Improving customer service strategies

You can solidify customer experience on social media in the following ways:

Use AI-powered tools that help you to automatically respond to client queries and transfer critical issues to human agents.

Train your customer care team to handle critical customer queries that AI tools and bots cannot solve.

Respond to the positive consumer feedback, highlight and share them for more people to view your customer experience, and reward them for their loyalty.

Don't ignore negative feedback or reviews; stay positive in handling them. It shows your responsibility and behavior to others by scrolling through the comments.

Inform customers about how you implemented their suggestions or acted on their feedback, showing that they are valued and heard and not just a number on the docket list.

Research data for valuable insights

Your consumer experience management strategies must include researching and analyzing your competitors' data. Remember, your consumers are spoilt for choices of numerous attractive brands on social media, and to catch their attention, improving customer experience is essential.

Collect your competitors' data on how they engage people and their social media performance. It helps you set a benchmark to improve your strategies and methods of approaching consumers and generating leads.

For example,

Not able to effectively manage your content. Start outsourcing and use influencer and affiliate marketing to help with organic traffic.

Your Twitter posts are not reaching the target audience. Reconsider your keywords!

Your Instagram posts need more customer engagement. Use posts with visually appealing creatives, catchy copies, and relatable content.

You can assess customer satisfaction via online surveys on your website or social media handles and make appropriate changes.

How to align social media and customer service teams?

In the digital age, customers expect a consistent experience across multiple social media channels. To avoid problems, you must be aware of how to handle social media and customer service terms.

Maintain a consistent voice across multiple channels

You must ensure your tone, logo, and color schemes remains consistent across all channels. It helps businesses to coordinate brand values and beliefs and communicate them with consumers.

Ensure your customer service team pays attention to social media

Customer service via social media channels is no more a "nice-to-have" but a "must-have." Therefore, it is vital to pay attention to social media channels and look for client reviews, feedback, tags, comments, etc.

Collect data from the teams to create a social media plan

Planning and sketching strategies are essential for offering the best CX. Social media and customer service teams must collaborate to create a social plan that includes all elements to make a good customer experience.

Social media and customer service teams must collaborate

Both teams must cooperate with each other to offer a seamless customer experience. It includes scheduling regular meetings, supplying essential data and ideas, and implementing the right tools.

Use CX technology

CX technology assists businesses in generating insights throughout the organization. It ensures managers and executives from different teams view how customers see your brand from the outside in. As a result, you can draw a unified voice and a holistic approach to improve the customer journey.

How Layerise can help you improve customer experience

Layerise combines unique customer experience abilities with CRM and marketing, enabling you to establish good customer relationships and increase revenue streams.

We know you get repetitive questions from numerous clients. Therefore, you can use our tools that replies automatically to clients and doesn't need a human touch. We increase product usage with story-like instructions, maintenance reminders, and send-outs.

We provide an in-depth view of your consumers' geographical, demographical and behavioral data. It helps you understand your audience and track consumer satisfaction.

Furthermore, our SMS marketing strategy is an automatic marketing campaign that sends personal and relevant messages to audiences and helps increase conversions.

We collect customer feedback and connect your product ratings to other public forums or review sites. It ensures you always keep track of client feedback.

Plus, we allow you to connect with popular tools to use data for e-commerce, marketing, or CRM activities. Enhance customer experience, collect data and reduce backlog with Layerise. Book a demo with us today!

Conclusion

Businesses need to make an effort to satisfy their customers, retain them longer, or generate new clients, and social media is a shortcut to reaching a large target audience.

Boosting customer experience via social media channels may seem complicated at the top. But, once you understand the process and use the right tools, it becomes easy and manageable.