Both online and offline businesses are using social media to market their brands to their target audiences.
There are about 4.338 billion internet users. Out of these, about 3.484 billion people use social media, which translates to almost half the population of the world. This makes it one of the most important platforms to reach your customers.
Both online and offline businesses are using social media to market their brands to their target audiences. However, with the right Customer Relationship Management software (CRM), you can improve your customer service through social media too. A presence on social media makes it easier for customers to reach out to your business for any queries.
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However, before understanding how to optimize your customer service using CRM for social media, you need to see why it’s needed.
Why is a social media CRM needed?
A social media CRM enables you to reach out to your customers on various social media platforms. Based on the interactions on these platforms, you can gather tremendous insights about your customers. This includes their sentiment about your brand, company, and products.
A good social media CRM can collect this data from your interactions on social media and help you analyze it. Additionally, it can pass on this information to your sales and marketing teams. This can help them understand your customers better, which, in turn, can give a boost to your marketing and sales efforts.
How to use it to improve customer service
To give a better multi-channel experience to your customers, you can use a social media CRM. It can help you respond to customer’s queries instantly and give your customers the very best customer service.
Regardless of the channels, you need to provide good and consistent service to your customers. Here are some ways you can improve your customer service through using a social media CRM.
1. Satisfy customer expectations
Today’s consumers expect better customer experience more than anything else. In fact, brands that gave a good customer experience managed to get an average of 17% revenue growth within five years. In comparison, brands that fared poorly got just 3% growth during the same time period.
You need to ensure that your communication with customers is personalized and prompt across multiple channels. Using a social media CRM such as Salesmate, you can easily monitor your customers’ interactions and provide service to them no matter which channel they are on.
Additionally, many consumers voice their concerns via social media. If your brand has a social media CRM, those concerns can be tracked and managed well across every channel. This is in stark contrast to a traditional CRM that can only track emails and phone calls.
2. Better customer support
About 46% of consumers complained to brands on social media in 2017. Additionally, 55% of consumers think that their problems will be addressed or resolved when they write about them on social media. Also, about 81% of consumers feel that social media has led to increased accountability for brands.
Image via Sprout Social
Through social media, you can interact with your customers in real-time and solve their queries. Additionally, you can monitor social media for complaints regarding your brand or products. These can be resolved speedily through the use of a CRM. Fast resolution of complaints and queries can improve your customer experience and satisfaction.
It can increase your brand’s engagement with consumers over time. Communicating with them in real time can even help you build stronger and deeper relationships.
3. Get insights and act on them
Through a social media CRM, you will be able to gather data about your customers. You can figure out their pain points and the things that they like about your brand and products. From these insights, you can modify your products and services to improve them.
These insights include monthly sales summary, pipeline conversion and even team effort. You can also figure out which channels are bringing you the most sales and how close you are to your goal. It is possible to get real-time sales forecasting insights that allow you to act immediately. This way, you’ll be able to direct your team in the right direction to reach your sales goal.
Additionally, you’ll be able to figure out the effectiveness of your customer support. Based on that, you can make changes to provide the best possible experience for your customers.
4. Find brand advocates
If you have a social media CRM, you will be able to keep track of your customers on social media. You can find customers who are talking and spreading a good word about your brand in their own social circles. These brand advocates can help you through word-of-mouth marketing.
About 61% of consumers are likely to research a product that was recommended by their friends. Comparatively, influencer marketing only pushes 36% of consumers to look at a recommended product. For this reason, it is more beneficial to go for word of mouth marketing than influencer marketing.
Once you’ve found these brand advocates, you can reward them by giving them some freebies or a discount code. This will further motivate them to spread awareness regarding your brand. Additionally, the reward will also improve their experience with your brand. This can help you retain a valuable customer in the long-run.
Not only does the user-generated content help with brand awareness, but it can also build your credibility. You can share their content on your own social media profiles or put their reviews up as testimonials. This can improve the credibility of your brand through social proof and its reputation as well.
5. Maintain voice across channels
To improve your overall customer service, you need to improve the customer experience as well. A great way of doing this is by maintaining your voice across all the channels of communication.
If, for example, if you are prompt at responding on one social media channel but not on another or the way you respond changes from channel to channel, your customers may easily away from your brand. A social media CRM can help you keep a consistent voice across all your channels. This will not only help improve the customer experience but also establish your brand’s identity.
To do this well, it can help to have a tone of voice document. This document should detail the personality traits and values of the brand. It must also consist of the dos and don’ts of communicating with customers. Lastly, it should detail the grammar and the structure of communication. You can pass this on to your employees to help them understand how to communicate and to maintain consistency.
Customers can easily spot disparities in a brand’s voice and can call out your brand for the same. For instance, Air Canada brands itself as a company that prides itself on serving its nation’s people. If this brand suddenly changed their voice when speaking to customers on social media platforms, their customers may have a poor experience. However, with a social media CRM, it is possible to keep this voice consistent.
Final thoughts
A social media CRM can help you reach your target audience and customers on social media. Additionally, it gives you access to data about your customers, which can help you enhance your customer experience.
You can immediately resolve their queries in real-time and communicate with them to build lasting relationships. It also becomes easier to find brand advocates on social media through this mode. Lastly, you can maintain a consistent voice on all the channels to give your customers a great experience.