You will never find successful businesses that refuse to use technology. Simply put, the business will never survive without it. “Keep up with the times” – this is an important reminder to everyone, especially businesses trying to provide the best products or services to customers.

Through the years, many businesses, no matter how big or small, used and continues to use social media for customer service purposes. If you’re not taking advantage of social media in this day and age, many (including I) believe that you are missing out on a lot of beneficial things. 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn – these are just some of the social media networks that currently dominate the web.  

Rightfully so, the customers should have a good social media experience – as good as the telephone or even brick-and-mortar experience. All in all, social media is very important in customer service. Below, we discuss and list down the importance of social media in customer service.

It lets you listen to your customers.

Keep an eye on your customers in social media. Every day, every minute, or even every second, your customers of all kinds use social media to publicly express their thoughts, emotions, opinions, and even incidents – no matter how big or small. 

Listen to what the customers say in social media. Doing all of this, you will surely know “what is up” and be positioned in fitting conversations you should definitely pay attention to.

Personalization is easier to attain.

Believe us when we tell you that personalization in today’s age is vital for your business’s success. From a craze, it became a necessity. After all, in a world dominated by technology otherwise known as the digital age, personalization is everything. Wherever social media network you engage with customers, make sure it is personalized.

Empathize and understand your customers. Show them you care. To emphasize, make them feel that they are talking to a real person, not just to a machine that more or less answers yes or no questions.

Address them with their first name. Explain and solve their problem for them as soon as possible. Furthermore, give them assurance. You may or may not solve their issues immediately. If it falls on the latter, promise them that the business has its full attention and support. 

With all of that being said, know that everything mentioned is possible through social media. Also, take note that this is very important in providing customer service through the use of social media.

This helps you respond instantaneously.

By that, we really mean instantaneously! Nowadays, customers or consumers expect answers immediately. And, social media is your best bet when it comes to providing real-time responses. The perfect examples for this are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In the US alone, a whooping 69% of adults use Facebook! 

Customers want their concerns answered more or less within an hour – maybe even less, depending on the severity (or lightness) of the problem. One of the importance of social media in customer service is its ability to provide you a way in which you can send quick responses.

It helps you save more money.

We are in no way taking away the importance of phone calls in the call center industry. It still has its niche, so to speak. However, research shows that phone calls are more expensive. Correspondingly, using social media helps call center save more money. 

However, this does not mean ditching the phone call and sticking to social media full time. It certainly helps to designate and spread out both the load to reach an end goal efficiently using each platforms. They have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses; using them wisely is imperative, to say the least.

Last (but certainly not the least), customer prefer it!

As we have mentioned many times now, social media dominates this day and age. You rarely see anyone not using different gadgets or consoles to access the web and browse through different social media network. It is the norm of today.

With that said, customers prefer using social media to communicate. 90% of social media users already communicated with a brand through the use of, obviously, social media. Moreover, approximately 63% of customers expect companies or brands to have a social media page and offer customer service there. 

This answers a lot of questions: mainly the importance of social media in providing excellent customer service.

Things learned

The social media trend is just getting started. With the rapid advancement of technology, expect it to become bigger in the following years. Along with that, the importance of social media in customer experience will also rapidly increase.