No matter what your business niche is, it’s a great idea to use Instagram for business. With more than a billion Instagram users, 90% of whom follow at least one business, the second largest social network is a place to be and to avoid Instagram mistakes at all costs.
Any proof needed? Over 25 million businesses and 2 million advertisers promote their products on the platform. However, having an Instagram presence isn’t enough to reach your target audience, grab the attention, and turn these people into paying customers.
It doesn’t take much time or effort to choose your competitors over you. To stand out from the crowd of competitors who crave the attention of your target audience, you need to stay one step ahead of them and shift your focus from your product to customer experience marketing while avoiding any Instagram mistakes in the process.
What is Improved Customer Experience on Instagram?
First thing first: customer experience is the impression your customer has with your business, based on all interactions during all stages of the customer journey, from awareness to loyalty.
When it comes to Instagram, customer experience matters. Why? 83% of Instagrammers use this platform for product discovery and 80% of people say that Instagram helps to decide whether to buy a product or service.
If you want to grab the attention of your target audience and keep your followers interested, it’s important to provide improved customer experience, so it must be easy for Instagram visitors to:
- Understand what your product or service is
- See the variety of products you offer
- Learn more about the descriptions and prices
- Find social proof on Instagram from other customers
- Get answers to their questions
Well, it’s easier said than done. Thus, it’s important to pay attention to the top six Instagram mistakes that impact your customer experience and their solutions. Let’s dive in!
1. Avoiding Customer Contacts on Instagram
The popularity of Instagram has changed customer expectations a lot. Since an average Instagram user spends 53 minutes a day on the platform, it’s easier for customers to call out brands on Instagram and they expect to get a response without leaving the app.
However, many brands haven’t realized the importance of Instagram for providing customer service, so one of the most common Instagram mistakes is they avoid getting in touch with customers on the platform. Let’s take Annah Hariri, for example:
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More than 150 million people use Instagram Direct to communicate with a business each month. With over 446k followers on Instagram, it’s more likely Annah Hariri receives hundreds of direct messages from customers daily. Thus, Annah Hariri uses its bio section to tell its Instagram visitors and followers that the company doesn’t reply to direct messages or handle orders.
Obviously, it can be daunting for big companies to handle all orders, inquiries, and messages on the platform, but it’s all about customer experience, your brand reputation, and revenue.
Look: One study found that people who interact with brands on social media spend 20-40% more money with those companies than other customers. In other words, if you use Instagram for business promotion, you must be ready for communicating with customers on the platform.
The solution: To keep your Instagram followers satisfied, it’s important to solve customer requests on the platform, so it can be a good idea to hire a remote social media moderator who can deal with inquiries you receive on Instagram.
2. Disable Comments for Instagram Posts
The number of Instagram users is growing, so it’s no wonder that the number of trolls increases, too. No matter how hard you try, brands of all sizes and niches may receive negative comments from dissatisfied customers or trolls from time to time. Since people pay close attention to customer reviews, these comments can negatively affect your brand reputation. Thus, some companies disable comments on their profiles to avoid handling negative comments.
For example, Bootees has turned off commenting, so Instagrammers can’t share their thoughts in the comment section.
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At first blush, comments on Instagram are secondary to the posts, so it doesn’t matter whether your followers can leave comments or not. But here comes the ugly truth: The days when Instagram was a simple visual platform are far behind us. Today, it has become an important messaging platform that helps customers get in touch with brands and people want to be heard and valued.
For brands, this means the importance of letting your target audience share their thoughts on your products, and the comment section matters, too. Reading comments, not only can you understand your customers better, but you can also attract the community of like-minded people who find your comments useful.
The solution: Although it can be tempting to disable comments and avoid negative feedback, it’s a good idea to turn comments back on and therefore let your target audience share their thoughts.
3. Failing To Meet Your Customers’ Demands on Instagram
The number of products and services is growing, so it doesn’t take much time or effort for customers to find a similar product if they are not satisfied with your company. In other words, it’s important to keep up with customers’ demands to stay competitive on the market.
Leaving a comment is the easiest way for customers to share their pain points with brands and other consumers who seek social proof before making the purchase decision. When you fail to meet customers’ demands, you can receive negative comments that can affect your brand reputation. Check out how Andrea Mucci used the comment section on Wizzair post:
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When people call out your brand on Instagram, they want to get a reply as it shows that you put your consumers first. When it takes days to get a response from you, modern customers lose interest in your brand. What is more, it can turn off other customers who are doubting whether they want to buy from you or not.
All brands fail to meet customers’ demands from time to time, but it’s important to apologize for the inconvenience and solve the problem fast. For example, you can create an online gift certificate and reward your customers for sharing their experiences with you as it can help to increase brand loyalty and get time to work on the issue.
The solution: To turn your followers into happy customers, it’s important to identify customer expectations and never make promises you can’t keep. Plus, it’s a good idea to start a conversation with your customers on Instagram and pay close attention to their thoughts.
4. Adding Links in Captions
As the most engaged social platform with a solid community of users, it’s no wonder that companies try to drive more website traffic with Instagram. If businesses include a website link in the bio section or try to reach 10k followers to use Instagram Stories links, that’s fine. But if businesses add links in the captions or comments, it’s a bad idea that negatively affects the customer experience.
To make a long story short, let’s see how it looks like in action:
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When you add links in the captions or comments, these URLs are non-clickable which means your followers can’t tap on them and get directly to your target page. The only way for your followers to visit the page is to remember your URL and search for it after leaving the app. Not only does it require a bit more effort from your followers, but these links also look spammy.
The solution: To improve customer experience on Instagram, insert a link in the bio and add a call to action in the caption to encourage your readers to tap on the bio link and learn more. Plus, if your followers crave customer service, you can slide into direct messages and send links directly to them.
5. Ignoring Instagram Followers’ Comments
As you can see, comments play a key role in communication on Instagram as they help people express their thoughts and feelings with ease. When people share their customer experiences (both bad and good) on your business profile, they want to help your company improve your product or service.
When you ignore followers’ comments, not only do you miss customer feedback, but you also let customers tell their friends and family about the negative experience they have had with you.
Example:
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Comments are a valuable source of customer feedback. However, reading customer comments isn’t enough; you also need to make the most out of them and gather customer feedback to improve the quality of your products and increase customer satisfaction. Why? Implementing customer feedback makes your customers 97% more likely to be loyal to you.
The solution: Turn on notifications to keep a track of comments your posts receive, read and analyze them, and solve customers’ issues if needed to show other followers that you put your clients high on the list.
6. Missing Customer Feedback
It’s no secret that customer feedback matters. When you know what your customers think about your product, you can understand their expectations better and therefore meet them with ease.
Brands try to read comments and monitor direct messages on Instagram, but not all customer feedback comes from your Instagram followers. In fact, 96% of people who discuss your brand online don’t follow you on Instagram. For brands, this means they can miss out important messages their customers want to deliver.
Let’s take the following post as an example of this common types of Instagram mistakes:
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Although Fleur Britten wrote a post on her profile, she tagged Made.com to draw their attention to the post. After several days of silence, Fleur Britten visited the Made.com Instagram profile to go the extra mile:
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When companies don’t act on customer feedback, it negatively affects their brand reputation and gives a reason for other people to avoid buying from them. All in all, it prevents the company from growing revenue.
The solution: It’s hard to check out customers’ profiles manually, so it’s a great idea to use social listening tools that help to receive notifications about your brand mentions and work on customer feedback.
The Final Thoughts on Instagram Mistakes in Customer Experience
With the growing popularity of Instagram, it’s no wonder that brands want to jump on the bandwagon and reach out to their potential customers on the platform. If you have an Instagram presence, that’s great. But if you put your customers first, you can achieve Instagram success.
Thus, it’s important to avoid making Instagram mistakes that negatively impact your customer experience. I hope that the above-mentioned examples and solutions can help you get a better idea of improved customer experience on Instagram.