Customer Care Archives | Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-care/ Sprout Social offers a suite of <a href="/features/" class="fw-bold">social media solutions</a> that supports organizations and agencies in extending their reach, amplifying their brands and creating real connections with their audiences. Thu, 16 Mar 2023 21:26:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://media.sproutsocial.com/uploads/2020/06/cropped-Sprout-Leaf-32x32.png Customer Care Archives | Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-care/ 32 32 The social media customer service metrics that experts measure https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/#respond Thu, 16 Mar 2023 14:00:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=148617/ When you think about social media customer service, there are probably two encounters that come to mind: the best experience a brand ever provided…and Read more...

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]]> When you think about social media customer service, there are probably two encounters that come to mind: the best experience a brand ever provided…and the worst.

For example, maybe you’re completely loyal to the airline whose customer service rep magically found you the perfect flight. Even in the face of price increases and flight cancellations, you’ll never book with another airline again.

On the other hand, you might still be furious at the furniture company that delivered the wrong items to your home and refused to refund you. Even after five years, nothing can persuade you to end your boycott of the brand.

A data visualization that reads: When brands take too long to respond on social media, consumers will... The responses include share their negative responses with friends and family (36%), not complete their purchase (31%) and buy from a competitor instead (30%).

Many of us know firsthand that poor social customer service has consequences, and the data agrees. According to The Sprout Social Index™, when brands take too long to respond, 36% of consumers share their negative experience with friends and family, 31% won’t complete their purchase and 30% buy from a competitor instead.

Only the brands that go above and beyond for their customers receive enviable brand loyalty. In this article, we’re breaking down the essential social media customer service metrics you need to track to ensure you provide exceptional service and care on social. As customer service inquiries continue to increase on the channel, up-leveling your efforts will help you future-proof your business and stand out from your competition.

What are social media customer service metrics?

Social media customer service metrics are data points that help you tell the story of how well your customer care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics uncover what your social customer care team is doing well, where there are opportunities to improve and what tools are needed to fill those gaps. Social customer service metrics can be grouped into three categories: speed and efficiency, volume and team productivity, and sentiment.

A graphic that reads: What are social media customer service metrics? Data points that enable your team to tell the story of how well your customer care efforts are satisfying your customers. These metrics help you learn vital insights that translate to organization-wide goals.

Social customer support data also reveals how your support strategy on social fits into the omnichannel customer experience your brand provides. Using data empowers you to answer questions like:

  • Where are our customers most likely to make service inquiries?
  • How satisfied are our customers with the support we provide on social? How does it compare to other channels?
  • What are our customers’ most common questions?
  • Where in the funnel are our customers most likely to get stuck?

How to use customer service metrics to level-up your org-wide performance

Tapping into customer service metrics will help evolve your approach to customer care. With these findings, you will be on track to cultivate an emotional connection with your audience, build brand loyalty and foster customer retention and advocacy.

But the use of these metrics goes beyond improving the customer experience. Social media customer service metrics have the power to transform the way you do business—from refining product development to building your company-wide strategy. For example, the team at Grammarly uses incoming customer support messages to surface valuable user stories for their product and user experience teams, as well as company leadership.

And they’re not alone. In a Gartner online survey of 283 customer service and support leaders from August–October 2022, 84% of customer service and service support leaders cited customer data and analytics as “very or extremely important” for achieving their organizational goals in 2023.

Customer insights gleaned from service interactions on social are your “secret sauce” for building cross-functional collaboration at your company. Let’s get into the 10 specific metrics you need to monitor, and how you can track them with Sprout Social.

Speed and efficiency customer service metrics

How quickly your brand responds on social media contributes to your reputation for providing good customer service. According to Index data, while more than three-quarters of consumers expect a response in the first 24 hours of reaching out to a brand on social, 57% actually expect a response within the first hour.

Measuring your team’s response rate efficiency is imperative. Look to the following metrics to help benchmark and improve your performance.

1. Average first reply time

Average first reply time refers to the time it takes for your team to send out the first reply to an inbound customer message within business hours.

2. Average reply wait time

Measuring the time to your first response is just the beginning. Average reply time reveals how long customers wait in between responses until their issues are resolved, which is equally important.

For example, if it took five minutes for you to reply to their first message, and 10 minutes to reply to their second, the average reply wait time would be seven minutes.

How to track these in Sprout Social

In Sprout Social, the Smart Inbox unifies all your incoming messages into a single stream, enabling you to monitor incoming messages, foster conversations and respond to your audience quickly. The Inbox also creates multiple reports that visualize and contextualize your team’s customer service performance.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Smart Inbox tool that demonstrates a brand receiving all incoming messages and mentions from social in a single stream. In the image, you can see incoming messages from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Inbox Team Report enables you to evaluate your brand’s reply times at a team level and distill the metrics down by team member. The report also demonstrates median first reply times, slowest reply times, unique messages replied to and total replies listed by team members.

Use these insights to evaluate agent response performance more accurately, identify bottlenecks within your team’s workflows and closely monitor each agent’s activity for quality assurance or training purposes.

A screenshot of Sprout's Inbox Team Report that displays overall average wait and reply times, as well as social customer service metrics by team member.

By using features like this in Sprout, MeUndies reduced their average response time to less than 20 minutes.

Volume and team productivity customer service metrics

High-quality customer service isn’t just about response times. You must also demonstrate that you’re resolving all customers’ problems, questions and inquiries that require comprehensive support solutions. To do this, compare your productivity data to your overall volume and social media customer service stats in your industry.

3. Total received messages

The number of total received messages indicates how many total customer messages landed in your inbox.

4. Total replies or response volume

This figure represents the total number of responses your team sends to customers.

5. Reply or response rate

Response rate is the rate that brands respond to messages or comments that they receive on a daily basis. Not every single comment or message will need a response, and the amount you need to respond depends on the needs of your customers.

Social media response rates vary by industry, with an average overall response rate of 34%. The consumer products, health, wellness and fitness, retail and food and beverage industries are leading response rates by responding to over half of all incoming customer messages.

A graphic representation of social media response rates by industry. The consumer products, health, wellness and fitness, retail and food and beverage industries are leading response rates by responding to over 50% all incoming customer messages.

6. Resolution rate

Resolution rate—the percentage of customer inquiries that are fully resolved—reveals how equipped your entire company is to address customer inquiries. This data illustrates how well your internal teams collaborate to find solutions for customers in a timely manner. It’s calculated by dividing the number of total actioned messages by the total number of messages.

How to track these in Sprout Social

The Inbox Activity Report provides a holistic view of your team’s social care efforts by presenting trends of incoming message volume and identifying the rate and speed of actions taken on messages by your teams. This report answers how much your team is accomplishing in the Smart Inbox.

A screenshot of Sprout's Inbox Activity Report. In the report, you can see a summary of all key performance metrics for received messages and inbox actions and a change over time in inbox volume.

You can also use the Task Performance Report to measure your team’s productivity and efficiency based on task management. The report compares the number of assigned tasks with the total completed tasks.

A screenshot of Sprout's Task Performance Report that demonstrates task metrics overall (total assigned compared to total completed) and broken down by team member performance.

Sentiment customer service metrics

With so much valuable performance data, it might be tempting to zero-in on ways you can optimize your social customer care strategy. But don’t forget about the big picture. The insights you gain from your customer interactions are integral to your entire company’s strategy. Maximize the impact of your direct access to the customer by sharing sentiment analysis data companywide.

7. Most used quick replies

If you use a chatbot to optimize customer interactions on social, most used quick replies refer to the most commonly selected options. Use this data point to identify customer support trends, and optimize your customer service process to address these common requests quickly.

8. Most received topics and subtopics

The keywords or themes that pop up in your inbox often are your most received topics and subtopics. Tracking these topics and subtopics is challenging without the use of a tagging system or machine learning capabilities—however, tuning into them is essential for learning about your audience.

9. Positive and negative sentiment

Sentiment trends tell you a lot about what your customers think about your brand, products and services. Overall, sentiment can be described as generally positive or negative. Although that doesn’t encompass the full context of a customer’s experience, it does help you track and maintain a healthy ratio of positive sentiment, and be on the lookout for changes over time.

10. Voice of the customer data

Social media could be described as the world’s largest focus group. It unlocks an unprecedented amount of voice of the customer data, which helps you get to know your customers’ behavior, pain points, preferences and needs on a deeper level. This customer service metric is less quantifiable, but nonetheless rich in value.

How to track these in Sprout Social

When you receive incoming messages in Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you are able to add tags that indicate the content of the messages. For example, you can tag for audience type or service issue. Tagging your messages will enable you to visualize trends and report findings.

A screenshot of Sprout's Smart Inbox filtered for the tags coffee and latte. Only messages with those tags appear in the inbox.

You can also use Sprout’s artificial intelligence-powered listening tools to uncover sentiment trends from the Inbox. Listening tools make it easy to track changes in sentiment, which empower you to share reports in a timely manner—and act on negative sentiment before it’s too late.

A screenshot of a Listening Performance Sentiment Summary in Sprout. It depicts percentage of positive sentiment and changes in sentiment trends over time.

Provide your customers with an unforgettable social customer service experience

Whether you’re part of a social media team handling social support, part of a dedicated support team or somewhere in between, ground yourself in your goals for customer service. Then, as you measure performance and social media customer care metrics, you can adjust and better cater to your customers.

Try Sprout Social free for 30 days to start gathering these insights and get to know your customers on a deeper level.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-metrics/feed/ 0 Customer service chatbots: How to create and use them for social media https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-chatbots/ https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-chatbots/#respond Wed, 15 Mar 2023 14:50:49 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=148489/ Exceeding customer expectations isn’t as easy as it used to be. High inbound message volumes and rising customer care standards have left support teams Read more...

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]]> Exceeding customer expectations isn’t as easy as it used to be. High inbound message volumes and rising customer care standards have left support teams hustling to keep resolution times low. It’s officially time to call in the bots. Customer service chatbots, that is.

Don’t panic—no robot can replace a diligent customer service professional. They can, however, quickly handle the frequently asked questions that eat at your team’s bandwidth and leave less time for more pressing support needs.

The consequences of long wait times for high-touch issues can quickly reach your business’s bottom line. According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, 36% of consumers say they’ll share a negative support experience with friends and family. A comparable 31% won’t complete their purchase, while 30% will buy from a competitor instead.

Humans and bots can work together to keep customers happy, even as expectations climb. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about customer service chatbots, including tips on implementing a bot strategy that sounds anything but artificial.

What are customer service chatbots?

A text-based graphic that says, "What are customer service chatbots? A customer service chatbot is a conversational commerce tool that provides customer assistance via text chat, voice command or both. Brands implement these chatbots on their websites and social messaging platforms like Facebook and Twitter DMs."

A customer service chatbot is a conversational commerce tool that provides customer assistance via text chat, voice command or both. Brands implement these chatbots on their websites and social messaging platforms like Facebook and Twitter DMs.

Self-service options like chatbots empower customers to problem solve on-demand so that reps can focus on more complex support needs.

There are two different types of customer service chatbots:

  • Machine-learning AI chatbots
  • Rules-based chatbots

What are AI chatbots?

Machine-learning AI chatbots are programmed to self-learn as they’re introduced to new words, questions, sources of information and dialogue. These bots learn over time—the accuracy of their service improves as the volume of messages they engage with increases.

Amazon Alexa is one of the most famous examples of this bot type. If you have one in your home and think it’s becoming more attuned to your habits and preferences, it’s because she is.

These kinds of bots drive the dialogue and use context clues, embedded skills and conversation history to improve user experiences over time.

What are rule-based chatbots?

Then, there are rule-based chatbots, which follow a series of rules like a flowchart to drive a conversation. Rule-based customer service chatbots are often used for straightforward tasks such as providing basic information, answering frequently asked questions or performing simple transactions.

Rule-based bots give you more control over how your chatbots operate at every stage of the interaction.

Using chatbots for customer service: The pros and cons

The benefits of chatbots in customer service are enormous, but that doesn’t mean they are without limitations. Here are the pros and cons you need to know.

Con: Bots can only deal with limited scenarios

Rule-based chatbots can’t address questions or concerns outside of their defined rules. That’s why they’re best suited for straightforward support needs.

If customers need help outside of the chatbot’s scope, how your team responds and picks up where the bot left off becomes critical. There’s nothing more frustrating—and churn-inducing—than getting passed from bot to bot before receiving a higher tier of support.

Pro: Bots deliver instant responses

Customer service chatbots can increase overall customer satisfaction by boosting your team’s speed and efficiency.

According to the 2022 Salesforce State of the Connected Customer Report, 83% of consumers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company. Once they hit send, you’re on the clock.

Self-service support options like chatbots help your business reach the new gold standard of care. These tools solve common support requests before they make it to your team’s ticket queue, satisfying customers and streamlining your work.

Con: Bots can make customer service experiences repetitive and circular

Earlier, I mentioned rule-based chatbots operate similarly to a flowchart. Have you ever seen a flow chart with way too many options? The path to your final result probably felt endless.

An over-complicated bot strategy can evoke this same feeling for your customers. When self-service support stops being intuitive and starts feeling like a job, customer satisfaction is sure to take a hit. Prevent this by routinely auditing your scripts and rules so the experience stays fresh and up-to-date.

Pro: Bots can provide service outside of business hours

Unlike chatbots, people have lives that need to be lived! If you’re one of the many social media managers or customer service reps who loses sleep over missed messages, chatbots can help you rest easy.

Our team isn’t necessarily monitoring social media 24/7. If people need to reach out to us overnight, chatbots allow us to provide customers with an immediate response.
Carollyn Montales
Online Community Management Senior Specialist at Southern California Edison

Read the Case Study

If your business prefers to have mostly human-to-human interactions with your audience, using chatbots for customer service can help you fill the gaps during off hours. A simple, automated message letting customers know when they can expect a response is often enough to make them feel seen and heard until someone’s back on the clock.

Con: Bots can only offer the basics

In a bot’s eyes, we’re all equal. That sounds nice, but it can be an affront to loyal or influential customers seeking a more human interaction.

At the end of the day, your reps are best-suited for providing tailored care experiences that exceeds expectations. Timely chatbot responses keep customers satisfied. Authentic customer care experiences drive loyalty and word-of-mouth praise.

Pro: Bots help scale your customer care team operations

Phone, email, app, chat, text, DM—there is a never-ending list of ways that customers can reach out to your team. If you’re going to work successfully across multiple channels and technologies while offering quality experiences, you need to embrace automation.

Chatbots quickly answer FAQs and repetitive messages, so your team can shift their focus toward more pressing, complex challenges. The results of that teamwork are quicker issue resolution and happier humans on both sides of the conversation.

3 Examples of companies using customer service chatbots

Chatbot support adoption spread quickly. It’s easy to forget that just a few decades ago, the practice would have sounded like something straight out of a science fiction novel. Now, leading brands are supplementing their care approach to scale their operations, providing customers with high quality support faster.

Let’s see what those bots look like in action. Here’s how businesses are getting the most out of customer service chatbots on their website, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Domino’s

Domino’s has been a customer experience innovator since the launch of Domino’s Pizza Tracker® back in 2008. Their dedication to proactively addressing customer concerns—even simple ones like “I wonder when my pizza will get here?”—keeps their approach a cut above the rest.

A GIF of the Domino's chatbot, found on their website. In the GIF, a customer is provides their street address and places an order.

The brand’s approach to bot support further enriches their approach by supporting the end-to-end customer experience. It helps visitors place and track their orders without requiring app downloads or sign-ups, creating a frictionless experience that makes it easy to order again and again.

2. Caesars Sportsbook

A screenshot of Caesars Sportsbook's Twitter chatbot experience. The bot message says, "Thank you for your message, Emperor. Please share the following along with your question and a member of our team will get back to you shortly. 1) Email Address, 2) Phone Number, 3) State, 4) Question or concern"

Who says a chatbot can’t make you feel like royalty? If you don’t believe it, check out Caesars Sportsbook’s Twitter customer service strategy. Their DM bot builds transparency between their support teams and their customers, all while offering the emperor treatment.

When you message Caesars Sportsbook, the bot immediately prompts you to provide all the relevant details needed for quality support. The instructions request just enough information to prevent time-consuming back-and-forth between customers and support agents without putting too much work on either party.

3. Corelle

A screenshot of Corelle's Facebook Messenger chat bot. In the screenshot, the user sent an initial "Get started" prompt. The bot responds with, "Hi there! Thank you for reaching out, you are messaging with our chatbot. If you ever want to restart, please type "menu". What can we help you with today? Please select one of the options below so you can be directed to the correct team:"

Corelle dishware is known for being as beautiful as it is strong. You could say the same thing about their Facebook customer service chatbot.

The bot creates transparency by clearly identifying itself as a bot while setting expectations on when and how one can reach human support. If customers proceed with the chatbot, they can choose from four other unique prompts to push the conversation along. Those prompts include “order support”, “product support”, “shopping help” and “feedback”.

These conversation paths drive quick, convenient solutions for simple problems 24/7, so agents can focus their working hours on the complex issues only they can solve.

How to set up customer service chatbots in Sprout

Sprout Social users can use our Bot Builder to create, preview and deploy chatbots on Twitter and Facebook in a matter of minutes.

In the Bot Builder, you can create a chatbot from scratch or use a template to help you get started.

A screenshot of the Sprout Social Bot Builder. The Bot Builder home page includes a directory of active bots, and a list of available bot templates.

Whether you’re starting with a blank canvas or using a template, the first steps are the same. Select which profile you want your chatbot to monitor. Then, give your bot a name, an avatar and a description.

Once you click save, you’ll be brought to the screen where you’ll configure the chatbot. If you select a template, a decision tree with predetermined rules and script options will automatically populate in the configuration stage. You can run with it as is or add additional rules and completely customize the copy so the bot sounds and feels more on-brand. If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need to build out your own script and decision tree based on “Bot Says” this and “User Clicks” that logic.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Bot Builder workflow. The rule-based chatbot set up resembles a flowchart, offering different paths for users to take depending on their needs.

Each chatbot interaction starts with a welcome message that greets users when they send a direct message to your brand. In addition to text, you can add photos, GIFs and up to three call-to-action buttons in your welcome message.

From there, you can edit or add quick replies and menu options that users click to prompt an auto-response and reach the next step in the bot-driven conversation. Once you’ve added all the necessary layers and considerations, click the eye icon along the right rail to preview and interact with your chatbot before activating it.

A screenshot of the Sprout Social Bot Builder workflow with the preview window open.

For more guidance on how to set up chatbots and streamline customer care in Sprout, check out this learning portal lesson available to all Sprout customers and users in trial.

Customer-to-chatbot interactions will stream directly into the Smart Inbox, supporting seamless handoff between bot and human support. If you’re using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce, you can gain a 360-degree understanding of specific customer experiences in just a few clicks. Combined, these two tools pave a clear path for high-quality customer engagement.

A screenshot of a Sprout Twitter Bot Report, which shows a chart of interaction volumes by day, as well as a table of performance metrics.

Turn to the Chatbot Report for more real-time bot strategy enhancements. This report features key metrics like Interaction Volume, Most Used Quick Replies and Bot Messages Sent. Combined, they help you get a more accurate picture of how people are actually interacting with your bot and where there are opportunities for improvement.

3 Tips on customer service chatbot copywriting

Chatbots can’t provide that human touch, but that doesn’t mean they have to sound entirely mechanical either. Your scripts can turn a bot interaction into a memorable, on-brand experience. It’s not about pretending bots are human, but writing their scripts so customers have a positive experience interacting with them.

1. Introduce your chatbot

Some people still have their reservations about chatbot support. Their skepticism is valid—a poor chatbot experience can quickly go from “helpful” to “hassle”.

Getting your customers to embrace bot support starts with transparency. Use an introductory message to set expectations on what your chatbot can help with from the get-go. That way, customers can opt-out of the chatbot experience and wait for a human source if they want to.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Twitter chatbot. The automated message says, "Hi, there! Your friendly Sprout neighborhood chatbot here to provide any help while you’re in town. Please choose one of the topics below so I can point you in the right direction. If you want to chat with humans, they're also around – just send a DM! To resurface the menu, type the word ‘refresh’."

2. Give your chatbot  a personality

A lot of brands worry that chatbots sound, well, too robotic. But with tools like Sprout’s Bot Builder, you can dictate what your bot sounds like, so why not give it a personality?

Remember SmarterChild, the snarky yet informative AOL instant messenger chatbot? By today’s standards, it’s a rudimentary chatbot, but it had a sarcastic personality that at its peak entertained 250,000 people per day.

A screenshot of the SmarterChild chatbot responding to a message from AIM user @candiemonkie.

Personality is more than just how your chatbot ‘speaks.’ Sometimes brands will humanize their chatbot by giving it a name so the conversation feels more personable.

3. Keep your chatbot simple

Remember chatbots aren’t meant to replace humans, but to complement them. Even if you inject personality into your chatbot, keep your copy simple.

The ultimate goal is for chatbots to be helpful and provide solutions. Overly flowery language, metaphors and $10 words will just complicate things for your customers. As you’re writing chatbot copy, lean into instinct and talk like a human would.

Get started with customer service chatbots

Using chatbots for customer service creates a win-win-win situation. Customers get speedy, efficient support for their most common issues, agents get to focus on the complex work only they can handle and businesses reap the benefits of increased satisfaction on both ends.

With help from Sprout’s Bot Builder, you can smash previous reply rate records on critical social customer service channels like Facebook and Twitter. Find out how it can complement your customer care strategy by starting a free, 30-day trial today.

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]]> https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-service-chatbots/feed/ 0 Masterclass: How to Prepare Your Brand for a New Era in Social https://sproutsocial.com/insights/webinars/expert-masterclass-how-to-prepare-your-brand-for-a-new-era-in-social/ Wed, 15 Mar 2023 13:57:12 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=webinars&p=170481/ A lot has changed in social media since the early 2000s. Social has become influence–it is now the channel on which trends are born, Read more...

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]]> A lot has changed in social media since the early 2000s. Social has become influence–it is now the channel on which trends are born, important conversations take place and sentiments are revealed. We’re in a new era of social media. Is your brand prepared to meet the ever-evolving expectations of your audience?  

Rachel Karten, Social Media Consultant and creator of the Link in Bio Newsletter, has been in the industry for over a decade and knows quite a bit about the evolution of consumer-brand relations in the social world. She worked for brands like Bon Appétit and Plated and recently worked on the famous campaign at CAVA with Youtube star, Emma Chamberlain. 

Join us on Thursday, March 30th at 1 pm CT for a masterclass with Rachel Karten to learn how to best prepare for this next phase of social. 

You’ll leave this masterclass uncovering:

  • Why your old social strategy will no longer work in the new era of social media
  • How your brand can optimize social content for engagement
  • 3 campaign examples from brands Rachel helped succeed and tactics you can implement now

Your Speakers:

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]]> 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) https://sproutsocial.com/insights/managing-customer-data/ Mon, 13 Feb 2023 16:00:53 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=169754/ Collecting and managing customer data is ubiquitous in our digital-forward world. Customer data enables personalized social feeds and customer-centric marketing by making it easy Read more...

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]]> Collecting and managing customer data is ubiquitous in our digital-forward world. Customer data enables personalized social feeds and customer-centric marketing by making it easy to find your most engaged audience members.

Yet, data breaches and opaque collection practices have also turned customer data into a minefield. To harness the full potential of the data you collect, it’s imperative to demonstrate to your customers that their personal information is in good hands.

In this article, we’re giving you the tools to master customer data management on social media, so you can open up the door to gaining actionable business insights, improving cross-collaboration and delivering more effective sales and marketing strategies.

What is customer data management?

Customer data management (CDM) is the process of lawfully (and ethically) collecting, storing, organizing and protecting customer information for the purpose of gleaning insights that improve a brand and its offerings.

An orange and yellow graphic that reads: What is customer data management (CDM)? The process of lawfully collecting, storing, organizing and protecting customer information for the purpose of gleaning insights that improve a brand and its offerings.

Social and business intelligence data offers companies a wealth of information about their customers. By taking the raw data and distilling it into important insights, you will learn powerful ways to improve customer satisfaction across the board—from your customer care operations to product development. Bottom line: For long-term growth and success, your brand must always find new ways to improve your customers’ experience and optimize your targeting efforts. And you can’t do that without customer data.

Why customer data is one of your most valuable assets

A orange and blue graphic that reads: Customer data helps you: Nurture relationships with customers, provide a better customer experience, establish trust with your customers, build more effective marketing campaigns and create more opportunities for upselling.

Customer data is the root of business intelligence. The good news is your brand already has a wealth of data at your fingertips, and there’s probably more available you haven’t tapped into yet.

Collecting data and understanding your audience at every stage in the customer journey is key to nurturing relationships. It starts with having up-to-date information about your customers (like valid email addresses, their past experiences with your brand and psychographic data) and determining which channels they’re most likely to use (like social media or text). These insights empower you to create a better experience with your brand, which increases customer loyalty, retention and evangelism.

For example, when a customer contacts you on social media about an issue with their order, having their order history, shipping address and past interactions on file will save your team and the customer time, while making the customer feel like you value their business. But remember: You must use customer data effectively and securely store it for people to trust your brand.

We all have brands we’re loyal to. And when they contact us or we see their posts, we’re more likely to engage and get reeled in by their promotions. Customer data helps your brand narrow-in on your ideal target audience with your marketing and sales tactics. With customer data on-hand, you can build more impactful marketing campaigns and create ample opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

Customer data plays a pivotal role in making informed business decisions across the organization that foster continued growth for your company.

4 tips for managing and sharing customer data org wide

When it comes to data collection, there are infinite things you can learn about your customers. From basic attributes (like name, email address and demographics) to how they interact with your brand online (engagement, cost per click and conversion metrics). You can track their purchasing behavior (order history, average order value, usage) and source attitudinal data (voice of customer, sentiment and psychographics).

With so much rich customer data available, proper management is key. The data you have is only as good as your ability to use it. Here are four tips for managing and sharing customer data at your organization.

A blue and orange graphic that reads: 4 tips for managing and sharing customer. 1. Gather information with customer consent. 2. Invest in management software. 3. Train your team. 4. Regularly backup and update your data.

1. Gather information with customer consent

It’s non-negotiable to be transparent about your data collection process. If you don’t give your customers full visibility into the data you’re collecting and how you’re using it, you will violate their trust and could face legal consequences, including harsh fines and penalties.

Instead, aspire to be a consumer privacy advocate and make your data collection processes customer-centric. When you gather customer data via surveys, website forms, transaction history, tracking cookies and social media analytics, explicitly tell your customers and prospects what you’re using the data for. Only collect the details you absolutely need and use it for the exact purpose(s) you specified. Also be clear on how long you will keep and use the data.

A screenshot of a webpage that reads: How Google uses cookies. The page explains Google's cookie policy and features a video of a woman describing the process.

2. Invest in management software

Housing your customer data in a spreadsheet is both unsafe and inefficient. Improper storage of any kind opens your company up to the risk of a breach or misuse of data. To up-level your customer data management, invest in software that solidifies your security measures and harnesses/manages your data in one place. Having a single source of truth is crucial.

For example, Salesforce CRM software offers layers of security like multi-factor authentication, regulation compliance, user activity tracking and anonymized data to protect your customers (and your business). Sprout Social’s integration with Salesforce enables users to manage all their social customer care requests directly from Service Cloud, while enriching customer CRM profiles with social data. This is a major win for your data security and customer service efforts.

A screenshot of social data from Sprout integrated in the Salesforce platform, which demonstrates how incoming social messages can be linked to existing contacts and cases.

Request a demo of our integration today.

3. Train your team

Managing customer data is only possible if your whole team is on board. Host regular customer data trainings to empower ethical access and usage. Emphasize why customer data is important, how to use it for different business use cases and ways to share important insights across departments.

We recommend creating specific data collection, usage and sharing policies for your company. Make relevant details of your policy public-facing to provide additional transparency to your customers.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's privacy policy from our website. The policy explains how and why we collect and manage customer data.

4. Regularly backup and update your data

To be a good steward of customer data, make sure your data is always current. Perform frequent updates by recycling unresponsive leads, validating customer information and amalgamating duplicates. Regularly delete data you no longer use or that is past its expiration (like we mentioned in step one).

You should also have a customer data backup plan in the event you accidentally lose valuable data due to tech or human error.

How social media fuels your customer data engine

Social media platforms contain an endless supply of consumer data—you just need to know how to analyze it so you can discover actionable insights. Like identifying who your most engaged followers are. Or figuring out what your target audience is saying about your brand when they don’t tag you.

A person’s interactions with a brand on social—from the first time they like a post to the last time they DM a brand—give businesses so much insight into their customer experience and journey. From social data alone, you can learn:

  • Customer demographic and psychographic information
  • Interests and hobbies
  • Other brands they follow
  • What content they engage with
  • Their feelings toward your brand, products and industry

A screenshot of a Twitter exchange between a Sprout user and the Sprout Social Twitter account. In the message, the user raves about a new product feature, and our team responds with gratitude.

Use these findings to create a more holistic view of your customer by infusing social metrics into your consumer data engine.

How Sprout Social can help make managing (and using) customer data easier

With Sprout’s social media management features, it’s easy to collect, manage, analyze and utilize customer data. Our all-in-one social media management platform unlocks the full potential of social customer data to transform not just your marketing strategy—but every area of your organization.

Customer service features

The Smart Inbox unifies all your social messages into a single stream so you can foster relationships and respond to your audience quickly. It helps you visualize all inbound message volume across profiles, find new conversations happening about your brand and respond from one place.

A screenshot of an example Twitter direct message exchange in the Sprout Social platform. In the exchange between the customer and the company, the customer contact information and past experiences appear in the right side bar.

Contact Profile Views within the inbox provide a window into a user’s social media presence. From this view, you can reply, add custom contact information, notes and even see message history between you and your customer—streamlining all customer care actions. If you’re a Salesforce customer, you will be able to see if the user is already a lead or contact.

Listening

Sprout’s Listening tools help brands tap into global social conversation to extract actionable insights, identify industry gaps and improve brand health. Use listening to find and explore actionable audience data like demographics, sentiment, conversation topics, campaign analysis and competitor performance.

A screenshot of a Listening Performance Summary in Sprout's platform. The graphs featured illustrate changes in sentiment trends over time.

Social analytics and dashboards

Sprout’s analytics tools speed up data collection and distribution. Access metrics from owned and paid media like impressions, engagements, audience growth and cost per click. Dashboards—including interactive charts and graphs—reveal trends in customer data, and make it easy to share findings with internal partners and stakeholders.

A screenshot of the Sprout Social Profile Performance Report, which displays impressions, engagements, post link clicks and changes in audience growth.

For example, with Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, combine the power of social data with your other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources. This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

A screenshot of a Tableau dashboard populated with Sprout Social data and other marketing data. The dashboard illuminates how social data supports other marketing tactics.

To start collecting, managing and sharing customer data from social media, begin your free 30-day Sprout Social trial today.

Start your free Sprout trial

The post 4 tips for managing customer data end-to-end (and how social media can help) appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How to Build the Case for Social Media Investment in a Tight Economy https://sproutsocial.com/insights/webinars/how-to-build-the-case-for-social-media-in-a-tight-economy/ Thu, 09 Feb 2023 20:29:44 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?post_type=webinars&p=169780/ Executing on a social media marketing strategy is like completing an obstacle course. In 2023, amidst social media platform changes, budget cuts and a Read more...

The post How to Build the Case for Social Media Investment in a Tight Economy appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Executing on a social media marketing strategy is like completing an obstacle course. In 2023, amidst social media platform changes, budget cuts and a cost of living crisis, it feels a bit like the obstacle course is on fire.

If you’re feeling the heat, we see you and hear you. Managing social through tricky markets requires an additional layer of focus, rigor and empathy. It’s challenging to navigate but possible with extra preparation. 

Tune in to our webinar to hear about what you need to know to successfully navigate social media marketing through times of economic contraction.

In 45 minutes you’ll learn:

  • Positioning statements for influencing the C-suite towards continued social media investments
  • Why social matters across your entire business
  • 5 ways to maximize your current social media resources

The post How to Build the Case for Social Media Investment in a Tight Economy appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How to make your brand customer-centric (& top examples) https://sproutsocial.com/insights/customer-centric/ Mon, 30 Jan 2023 15:11:49 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=169260/ Secretly, every customer wants their experience with a brand to be like the set of Cheers—where everybody knows your name. But how do you Read more...

The post How to make your brand customer-centric (& top examples) appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> Secretly, every customer wants their experience with a brand to be like the set of Cheers—where everybody knows your name. But how do you build a relationship, especially when you’re managing multiple channels?

On Cheers, or at any neighborhood haunt, there are only so many employees and so many regulars to keep track of. When your business goes online, you’re dealing with thousands of potential customers at any given moment. Mastering a 1:1 feel, even when you’re operating 1:many, is crucial for customer loyalty.

According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, 30% of consumers will switch to a competitor if a brand takes too long to respond to questions or feedback. In economic times like these, that’s not a chance worth taking. The key to staying in your customers’ hearts—and wallets—is customer centricity.

What does it mean to be customer-centric?

A customer-centric approach means putting the customer at the forefront of every decision you make as a business. The customer experience should be the starting point for any new initiative, improvement or change you make. In practice, this means actively gathering intel on your customer through surveys or social listening, analyzing that data and proactively giving your customer what they want, or what they don’t yet know they want. Across teams, everyone is working towards keeping their customers happy.

This approach pays off. Over two-thirds (77%) of customers are more likely to increase their spending with brands they feel connected to, up from 57% in 2018, according to Sprout research. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2023 Report, leaders are taking notice, with 81% seeing customer experience and support as a growing priority for 2023. Another 71% are looking to revamp their customer journey this year.

77% of customers are more likely to spend more with brands they feel connected to

As Sprout Social President, Ryan Barretto, has said, “Customer success is the new sales.” Developing relationships with your customers is a nonnegotiable moving forward.

Examples of customer-centric brands on social

Social media is a perfect complement to your customer-centric strategy. Whether you’re connecting with your customers to triage when something goes wrong or communicating with them about a new product or trend, social is the perfect arena for relationship building. Here are four brands embedding social into their customer-centric strategy–and takeaways for how you can do it yourself.

Listening and learning with Cava

Cava, a Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant, serves up customized bowls and pitas. When they made the decision to discontinue their sweet potatoes, customers were quick to voice their unhappiness on social media. Cava listened to their customers and brought back the popular ingredient, announcing the news with a TikTok video featuring screenshots of customers begging for the tuber’s return.

@cava

Wait for it 😵‍💫 #CAVA #sweetpotatoes

♬ original sound – CAVA

In this example, Cava recognized their error and shifted accordingly, a key pillar of any customer-centric approach. But they took it a step further. Rather than relaunching sweet potatoes as an internally sourced campaign, they gave credit where credit was due and showed their customers that they’d been listening to their social media pleas.

Obviously, Cava didn’t relaunch an ingredient based on a few comments. This is where social data comes into play. Social listening tools like Sprout’s can help you aggregate the voice of your customer so you can make crowd-pleasing decisions and bring the best possible product to your customers.

Engaging in empathy with ban.do

Relationships, regardless of their form, are built on empathy. This goes for brands as well. Two-thirds of consumers who feel that a company cares about their emotional state are more likely to be repeat customers. But how do you show you care about the emotional state of thousands of individuals at once?

A lifestyle brand, ban.do, managed to capture the frenzy their customers were feeling on Black Friday with a single Tweet.

By focusing on a particular day of the year and understanding their customer, they were able to empathize with all 24,000 followers at once. As a lifestyle brand, ban.do customers are likely to be frequent shoppers, whether that’s with them or across the board. With that information, it’s not hard for a brand to decipher what their customers might be feeling during retail’s busiest season. If your customers are sales professionals, the end of a quarter might be a particularly prominent time for them. If your customers are avid bakers, they might feel excitement when the holidays approach. Get to know your customers and their seasonality so you can understand how they’re feeling.

Seizing the opportunity with Quest Nutrition

Your customers are talking about you on social. Do you know what they’re saying? By paying attention to your brand mentions on social, you can create organic moments that aren’t possible within your own feed.

One company that understands this is Quest Nutrition, an energy bar brand. A Quest fan had recently been laid off and in his announcement post, made the admission that he’d been secretly hoarding the complimentary Quest bars from his office. The brand saw an opportunity and commented that they’d send him some more bars as a condolence and a boost in his job hunt. It was an excellent example of “surprise and delight”.

Quest nutrition customer-centric comment

Quest got over 5,000 engagements with that comment. It begs the question of how much engagement you’re leaving on the table by simply focusing on your own posts. Instead of monitoring mentions solely for potential problems that need addressing, look for opportunities to proactively engage with your fans.

Practicing efficiency with Salesforce

By now, businesses have a set way of triaging customer issues on social media. Get the customer into the DMs and solve from there. There are major benefits to this approach from internal routing to traceability. But sometimes, the answer is sitting right in front of us.

A customer reached out to Salesforce with an issue. While the textbook response would be to move the conversation to the DMs, they directed their customer to help desk articles tailored to their problem in a reply. Not only did this move help the customer in fewer steps, it kept the conversation transparent so other customers who might be facing the same problem could troubleshoot on their own.

When you’re working toward customer centricity, it’s important to remember the burden on the customer. If something can be fixed with fewer clicks, that’s probably the right way to go.

How to become a customer-centric company on social

Feeling inspired to strengthen your customer-centric culture after seeing those examples? Us too. Here are a few ways you can prioritize customer centricity in your social strategy.

Get competitive

Being customer-centric means being the best choice for your customer. But you can’t measure your success unless you know what your competition is doing. Competitive intelligence is crucial for a customer-centric strategy. Keep tabs on your competitors through targeted social monitoring and listening, tracking your wins against competitors in your CRM and working with your sales team to hear what prospects are saying about them. You’ll be positioned to win in no time.

Sprout users can take advantage of Competitor Reports for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter—along with a Competitive Analysis listening template—to pull these insights on a regular basis.

Never miss a message

More than three-quarters of customers expect a business to respond within 24 hours on social media. Without the right tech behind you, that’ll take some pretty fast typing. Luckily, there are tools available to help you manage your inbox without missing a message.

Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox tool aggregates every message from all of your profiles in one place. From there, you can easily triage the requests to the relevant team—whether that’s sales, customer care or marketing. You can even create canned responses for frequently asked questions or concerns. You’ll be a master of customer communications.

Smart Inbox product screenshot

Get cozy with customer care

Anyone who has ever endured a support interaction knows all about the silos in the customer experience. Whether customers are having to repeat their issue to multiple team members before finding a solution or getting inconsistent answers from the companies’ inconsistent systems, they’re leaving unhappy.

Business leaders are beginning to recognize this opportunity for improvement and they’re making big plans to fix it. Over two-thirds (72%) believe that merging the teams surrounding the customer experience will increase efficiency and 62% plan to act on it.

But don’t stop at rethinking your team structure. Rethink your tech stack as well. Finding social media management systems that integrate with your customer support platforms can go a long way to eliminating concerns for both your team and your customer. Sprout Social integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud, so you can have a single view of your customer no matter where they’re contacting you.

Sprout and ServiceCloud integration

Listen before you speak

The benefits of social data are invaluable for your business, whether you’re working in R&D or investor relations. The first step of customer centricity is understanding your customer. Sprout’s tool gives you instant access to an aggregation of your customers’ opinions and needs. Wondering if your new serving sizes are working out? Listening data will tell you faster than any survey can. Want to gauge customer reception to a new product before launch? Post about it on social and let the data roll in.

The best part of listening data is the ability to make agile decisions. Instead of waiting on survey and focus group results to decide how to pivot, you can access real-time sentiment and make the call then and there.

Becoming a customer-centric company

A customer centric strategy is a great way to encourage loyalty. By listening to your customers’ needs, understanding and empathizing with their pain points, efficiently solving their problems and going above and beyond where needed, your brand can become their forever fan favorite.

Wondering how your brand stacks up when it comes to customer centricity? Use our customer experience audit and find out how your customer experience measures up to industry benchmarks and consumer expectations.

The post How to make your brand customer-centric (& top examples) appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How 3 top brands provide social media customer service and support https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-customer-service/ Wed, 14 Dec 2022 15:44:05 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=168037/ Social media customer service has become a consumer staple. There’s no going back on it now. Say goodbye to the era of phone queues Read more...

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]]> Social media customer service has become a consumer staple. There’s no going back on it now.

Say goodbye to the era of phone queues or endless email chains. Today’s consumers are commenting, tagging and sending direct messages. Immediate and accessible, social media provides a much-needed direct line between buyers and businesses.

Of course, what streamlines work on the consumer’s end can create some internal confusion if processes don’t adapt to keep up. Is your business ready to tackle high-volume service events across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more? If not, we’ve got the tips and tools you need to get it done.

This guide breaks down how brands can create a seamless social media support strategy. We’ve also gathered some of our favorite takeaways from brands providing great customer service across social.

Breaking down customer service vs. customer care

“Customer service” and “customer care” are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s make a quick distinction:

Social media customer service is the reactive support you offer your customers across social networks like Facebook and Instagram. Customers can request assistance via DM, a review site or through their own social posts. The time it takes to triage that request and respond appropriately is what makes a superior customer service experience.

For example, this customer reached out to the Spindrift social team on Twitter about a potentially sold-out product at 8:39. Spindrift responded promptly and enthusiastically at 9:07. In less than 30 minutes, Spindrift created a wow-worthy experience.

Customer care is about proactively meeting your customers’ needs. In terms of social customer care, that means:

  • Having a self-service help center
  • Educating customers about your product via social content
  • Interacting with customers consistently (even before they make a purchase)
  • Having answers and information on-hand before someone reaches out
  • Offering personalized service that goes beyond automated responses

If you’re looking for customer care inspiration, turn to Brooklinen. The direct-to-consumer bedding brand excels at proactively connecting with customers, even when they aren’t directly tagged or mentioned.

In short, social customer care is differentiated from service in that it starts before a customer reaches out to you about a product or service. That includes both responding to complaints and rewarding compliments.

What does good customer service on social media look like?

Great question!

Social customer service standards are constantly changing as network features evolve and people find new ways to contact the brands they love online. Staying up to date on what wows consumers today means staying on top of the social media trends that drive the most engagement.

That said, some fundamentals will never go out of style. These tips transcend networks because they’re simply standards of great customer service translated for an online audience.

Providing the best customer service on social can look like:

  • Keeping response times low: According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, more than half (57%) of consumers expect a response on social media within 12 hours. Tools (like Sprout’s Inbox Activity Report) can provide a holistic average of your response times across network so you can ensure they’re in line with consumer standards.
  • Going beyond business hours: Don’t worry; you don’t need to have your inbox staffed 24/7 to pull this off. There are customer service chatbots that support automated away messages. Use these tools to properly set expectations with customers contacting your brand at night and over the weekend.
A screenshot of a Facebook Messenger conversation between KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and a customer. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines uses a social media chatbot to handle initial customer service requests.
  • Making it easy: The best customer service creates little to no friction on the customer’s end. Pull this off by establishing a digital primary point of interaction. If you can’t solve the issue on social, direct them to another chat or ticket support solution. Customers seeking assistance online aren’t interested in dialing a call center.
  • Staying human: Your customers are people, who want to be treated like a person by a person when possible. Human touches, like personalizations and greetings, go far when providing service on a digital channel.

6 ways to provide great social media customer service

Let’s say you have a basic social media support strategy in place, but you want to increase your efficiency. Below are some ways you can take your approach from good to great.

1. Conduct a social customer service audit

There’s no sense in making changes for the sake of it. For a truly effective process revamp, conduct an audit of what’s currently working with your social media customer service strategy and what’s not.

A simple SWOT analysis can provide meaningful insights into where and how you can improve. What about your process is going well? Where are there roadblocks or bottlenecks? A candid conversation with your team will reveal where changes can be made.

For example, if you’re managing a high volume of messages split across multiple networks, it may be time to level up to a tool that aggregates them in a single location, like Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox.

A screenshot of Sprout's Smart Inbox feature, which centralizes all inbound social messages across channel into a single stream for easy monitoring.

In addition to incoming mentions, the Smart Inbox can pull branded keywords to cast a wider net on online conversations. That will help you find indirect mentions and other key terms for your brand quickly and easily. Sprout’s chatbot functionality also lets you keep an eye on chatbot-based conversations in the Smart Inbox, so a human team member can jump in when needed.

2. Create an internal tracking system

Good customer service creates a feedback loop that improves processes and products.

You need a way to monitor common issues that should be addressed at a company level, such as correcting an ongoing problem in your shipping process or identifying a recurring product defect. You also need to generate reports to make sure your plan is succeeding. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet.

The Tag feature in Sprout allows you to tag incoming messages with any created tag, such as “feature request” or “product complaint.” This way, you can quickly run a report on these tags to see what’s trending.

A screenshot of Sprout's Tag Performance Report, which allows users to run a report on Tagged messages for more custom reporting options.

Any service report you generate should also include how quickly you can respond and, if enabled, how pleased someone is with your service. This feedback loop encourages you to continuously improve your quality of service.

3. Use canned responses for consistent, speedy replies

If you’re looking to standardize your social customer care responses and address more customers ASAP, canned responses can do the trick.

Canned responses are saved messages support reps can roll out when responding to customers. Rather than write every reply from scratch, canned responses provided an approved, brand-friendly starting point. These replies can cover anything from general “thank yous” to specific concerns.

Create various customer service response templates based on your customers’ frequently asked questions. Check out this round-up of direct message templates for inspiration if you need a starting point.

4. Standardize your brand’s customer service voice

Having multiple people manage social media means that there’s more chance of your voice getting diluted.

You want your social approach to be cohesive across promotions, posts and service responses. It’s possible to have a “pun-tastic” attitude for original Tweets and a more conciliatory tone for customer complaints. Alternatively, you could go the Discord route and incorporate conversational cues directly from your audience.

However you approach it, document and create a brand voice strategy, so everyone on your team knows how to represent the brand on social media.

5. Document an escalation management strategy

There may be times when you can’t resolve a situation in the public sphere. Those instances call for a documented escalation management strategy.

Outline what types of situations should be escalated to a private channel like DMs or ticket support. For example, if a conversation gets contentious or personal information needs to be shared, it’s probably time to take things off the feed.

This will help ensure that reps only handle challenges within their wheelhouse and that customer issues are solved quickly and efficiently.

6. Uncover crucial customer conversations with monitoring and listening

Social listening is becoming increasingly crucial for the sake of social customer service.

With so many conversations happening via social, keeping track of every mention is often chaotic. That’s why so many brands today rely on monitoring and listening tools to uncover:

  • Brand mentions that aren’t directly @tagged (or misspelled brand mentions)
  • Competitor mentions related to your business, such as call-outs or comparisons
  • Compliments and shout-outs that could result in more positive customer sentiment

Listening is also invaluable for uncovering your customers’ frequently asked questions. For example, you might notice an uptick in volume about a specific feature or bug. You may realize that customers are stuck on the same few product features or questions. Tracking these changes via listening and writing canned responses to address them is a win-win for your social team.

Gathering voice of customer data gives you a more comprehensive understanding of what your customers want and need. A listening tool makes the process much easier.

3 Brands that provide great customer service on social

Now that you know the basics of providing stellar social media customer service, let’s check out some examples. Here are three brands that have mastered the art of creating lasting customer connections on social:

1. MeUndies

At MeUndies, the average time to first response on social is just under 20 minutes. That’s impressive, but it’s astounding when you account for the fact that they received more than 12,000 messages in just two months.

Providing high-quality service quickly is no easy feat, but it’s essential to delivering on the MeUndies brand promise. Social Media Support Coordinator TK Lynch believes doing so on social is key to meeting customers where they are.

“We want to create an experience that doesn’t feel like you’re dealing with a customer service representative. Social allows us to create a customer experience that’s personable and casual, while still being effective.”

To create these experiences, the MeUndies team relies on the Sprout Social Smart Inbox. The tool consolidates all inbound messages—including DMs, mentions and comments—within a single stream.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Smart Inbox feature, filtered to show Instagram Direct Messages.

For a business managing an Instagram following of more than 481,000, that’s huge.

2. Grammarly

More than 30 million people worldwide use Grammarly to punch up their personal and professional writing. Many turn to social media when they have questions or feedback on the product.

The Grammarly social customer care team recognizes this as not only an opportunity to provide excellent customer service but also as an opportunity to collect meaningful consumer insights. However, synthesizing feedback from more than 13,000 messages per month is no easy feat. To pull it off, they use Sprout’s Tagging feature.

“Once a month, we combine tagging insights from Sprout with Zendesk reports to create a deck that gets shared across the organization,” says Emma Hanevelt, Social Media Insights Analyst. “It’s how we keep others up to date on trends and opportunities we’re seeing in customer support.”

These reports make social media customer service data a cross-functional resource that informs product and service improvements. It’s no wonder many of their customers sing their praises on and off social.

3. Allegiant Air

As a direct sales brand, Allegiant Air knows that being accessible on social media is a crucial component of their customer care and engagement strategy. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Allegiant Air found itself triaging an influx of inquiries on social as customers looked to get questions answered or rebook travel plans.

“We have drastically increased how many messages we’re replying to across platforms, especially on Facebook,” said Customer Relations Manager Alyssa Salazar. “And we’re servicing more customers even though our team has been consistently the same size.”

In Q3 2019, the Customer Relations team responded to 8,185 messages across their social channels. In Q3 2021, that number nearly doubled to 14,490. With help from the Smart Inbox and a robust tagging strategy, the Allegiant Air team collaborates smarter and responds to fliers faster.

Screenshot of an exchange between a customer and Allegiant Air on Facebook

At your service with expert tips

Brands today can’t wing it when it comes to social media customer service. Without a plan or the proper tools, you’re inevitably letting your customer’s questions and concerns fall by the wayside.

Use the tools and tips above to help ensure that you’re actively listening to each customer and responding promptly. Remember that you have to walk before you can run. Attempting to implement multiple process changes at once might set you back instead of driving your strategy forward.

If you haven’t already, check out this roundtable featuring social experts from Subaru of America and Sprout Social. They’ll walk you through everything you need to know to take your social customer care strategy from reactive to proactive. 

The post How 3 top brands provide social media customer service and support appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sprout-social-salesforce-integration/ Tue, 06 Dec 2022 14:58:11 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=159950/ There’s a reason more and more companies are linking their CRMs with social media management tools like Sprout Social: Optimizing your customer experience should Read more...

The post How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> There’s a reason more and more companies are linking their CRMs with social media management tools like Sprout Social: Optimizing your customer experience should be at the forefront of your social media strategy.

Through a global partnership launched in 2022, Sprout and Salesforce are ushering in a new era of social customer care. The Sprout Social Salesforce integration empowers your brand to deliver world-class social customer care—all without interrupting your team’s workflow.

The Service Cloud integration ensures Salesforce customers can manage all of their social customer care requests directly from within Service Cloud while enriching customer CRM profiles with social data to provide a holistic view of customer interactions.

Want to speed up internal collaboration and uncover valuable customer insights at the same time? Our Salesforce integration empowers your social, sales and support teams alike.

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly how the Sprout Social Salesforce integration works. We’ll also highlight how the integration streamlines tasks across your entire business and makes it easier to prove the effectiveness of your strategies.

Why you need to integrate your CRM with social media ASAP

The importance of social media integrations with your business’ tech stack can’t be overstated. And your CRM platform should be a top priority.

This is especially true as customers rely on social media as a research tool, support channel and place to sound off about brands.

Looking at the top challenges of B2B marketers, the growing need for social media CRM integrations is clear. These challenges include:

  • Engaging buyers at the right time in the right channel (57%)
  • Giving the sales team relevant content to engage target buyers (23%)
  • Dealing with internal data silos and inefficiencies (17%)

The Sprout Social Salesforce integration addresses all of the above.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let’s dive into some of the key upsides of linking your CRM with your social presence.

Create a 360-degree view of your customer

Empower your agents with a complete customer 360 view before responding. Sprout Social enriches your Salesforce customer CRM data with social data to provide a comprehensive view. With this integration, agents can engage in real time with the right context.

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view, customized with the exact visuals and metric combinations companies need. This delivers rich data options and visualizations that give users a complete view of their customers, without requiring time-consuming work.

Monitor make-or-break moments in the buyer’s journey

CRMs help businesses assist leads and customers on the path to purchase.

And social media is where so many crucial moments happen during that journey.

This rings true for B2B and B2C alike. Let’s assume that the typical B2B buyer’s journey is around eight months. Social interactions are a given for folks doing their homework on a product.

Meanwhile, recent research from TikTok describes consumer behavior as an “infinite loop” in B2C. The modern path to purchase is far from linear when people are bouncing between so many channels.

As customers bounce between platforms and content, social media serves as a place to make valuable touchpoints along the way. This includes answering questions and publishing educational content to nurture leads.

The same rules apply to existing customers. Data from The Sprout Social Index™ 2021 notes the majority of people that follow a brand on social intend to buy from them (or buy again).

Earn (and track) more social sales

The growth of social selling speaks for itself.

Do activities such as customer care and content marketing contribute big-time to closing and retaining leads? Of course.

Still, they’re difficult to track without a CRM.

With integrations like those between Sprout Social and Salesforce, it’s so much easier to attribute sales from social. The ability to quickly answer questions and handoff cases between social, sales and support likewise makes it easier to respond to people quickly.

Gather meaningful customer insights you might otherwise miss

The more info you have about your customers, the better.

Consolidating touchpoints between social media and your CRM gives you a more in-depth understanding of your audience. And by tapping into Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, your team can access all consumer data in one place to get a birds-eye view of how social media fits into the larger picture.

Fact: 90% of marketers say data from social enables them to differentiate their brands in the market and stand out from their peers. Also, consider how many people use social media as a place to sound off about brands.

These conversations and activities provide insights for sales and support, including:

  • Sales objections
  • Pain points and challenges
  • Wants and needs
  • Competitor advantages (and disadvantages)

With all of the above on hand, your team can approach leads and customers with a much-needed sense of confidence.

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How does Salesforce integrate with Sprout Social?

Here’s a quick snapshot of the Sprout Social Salesforce integration and what you can do with it:

  • Create Salesforce contacts, leads and cases directly in Sprout. This means you can route social customers to support and sales without leaving Sprout or Salesforce.
  • Paint a complete picture of your CRM contacts with information and conversations via social media.
  • Tie your social presence to actual business results with analytics and reporting.
Sprout social salesforce integration link contacts
  • Respond directly within Service Cloud where agents work, reducing the need for multiple tools wrapped in a layer of governance and security.
Sprout Social within the Salesforce Service Cloud console

As an added bonus, our Salesforce integration is available on all Sprout plans. Features and requirements below:

  • Requirements: Salesforce account
  • Data types: messages, contacts, tickets
  • Key functionality: create leads, edit contact information, create cases, edit cases, auto-sync

What entities are available with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration?

Below is a breakdown of all the entities that can be created and edited directly within Sprout:

  • Leads: Kick off the sales process by identifying potential customers through questions, comments and other social media interactions.
  • Cases: Route customer issues or concerns posted on social to your support team without leaving the platform.
  • Contacts: Beyond customers, you can keep track of social interactions with contacts such as company partners.

To learn more, check out this detailed breakdown.

Sprout + Tableau + Salesforce

We understand there are times when you need to take social data outside of Sprout to combine with other data streams (including customer care and other marketing data), and to further customize it based on your company’s own internal preferences.

With Sprout’s Tableau BI Connector, you can combine the power of social data with other business channels. The tool enables you to analyze data, create custom metrics and merge different data sources.

A screenshot of a Tableau dashboard populated with Sprout Social data and other digital marketing data (banner ad impressions and email click through rates). The dashboard includes an interactive map that breaks down engagements per state.

This seamless and customized view gives you a consolidated source of truth for wider business insights and performance.

The integration:

  • Consolidates wider business updates
  • Builds your perfect dashboard
  • Accesses data without the dev network

For Salesforce users, this ensures social data and insights are included in your 360-degree view of your customers.

4 key benefits of using the Sprout Social Salesforce integration

To wrap things up, let’s look at some of the specific benefits of using a Salesforce social media integration like Sprout.

1. Provide better customer care

According to The Sprout Social Index™ 2022, there are two specific actions brands can take to earn consumer trust over a competitor:

  1. Respond to questions and concerns in a timely manner.
  2. Demonstrate an understanding of customer needs.

Our Salesforce integration can help you in both departments.

Again, logging social activity means a more comprehensive understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. Not having to bounce between your CRM and social tools is a huge time-saver. In turn, you speed up your response time.

sprout social salesforce integration case creation

Not only that, our intelligent case routing feature improves agent productivity and optimizes the customer experience through automated case creation and routing. Ensuring that inbound messages reach the right agent speedily—right inside of Salesforce.

The end result: Responding to customers faster and coming up with better solutions to meet their needs. Doing so is a recipe for long-term loyalty and retention.

2. Align your marketing, sales and support teams

Consider that 36% of marketers say they struggle with cross-team collaboration.

When marketing, sales and support are aligned, each team is empowered to do their best work. There’s so much room for error if you only log your customers’ social interactions sometimes.

Think about it. If marketing or sales leave out key customer details in your CRM, your support team is left in the dark. On the flip side, marketing should be aware of sales objections and concerns to better speak to customers’ desires.

Here are some specific ways that Sprout’s Salesforce integration can help:

  • Save time by eliminating needless back-and-forth between vendors, managers and social managers.
  • Swiftly route cases to avoid bouncing between tools.
  • Provide each team the context they need to serve your customers.
create a salesforce contact in sprout social

3. Boost the value behind your marketing content

Learning what makes customers bounce or stick around is invaluable for marketers.

Tracking these touchpoints can lead to the answers you need to create more impactful content and more meaningful marketing messaging overall. This includes:

  • Blog posts
  • Social posts (think: how-tos, tutorials and content you share to nurture customers)
  • Reports, white papers and other lead magnets
  • Webinars

For example, marketers might learn that high price points are the most common sales objection among lost leads. This information encourages the marketing side to reframe their messaging and how they speak to their audience.

4. More meaningful attribution via analytics

Perhaps most importantly, social integration with your CRM highlights the ROI of your team’s efforts.

This is an ongoing struggle for marketers, in particular. Although social media is a must-have for businesses, determining its business impact can be tricky.

That’s where Sprout comes in. Through our marketing and analytics features, brands can see how social engagements correspond with dollars and cents. Proving how these interactions contribute to revenue reinforces the value of social to stakeholders.

sprout social salesforce integration showing attribution for key metrics

And with our reporting functionality in Salesforce, you can keep track of your full omnichannel experience, including seeing which channels (e.g. phone, email, social) and social channels (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter) cases are being created from.

Salesforce Service Cloud console with Sprout Reporting

Food for thought: Sales strategy is the number one use case for social data, especially as social has more impact on the bottom line. However, only 65% of marketers use social data for their sales strategy.

This speaks to the importance of integrating social with your tech stack to advance the sophistication of your customer care.

When you need to aggregate all of your marketing, customer care and social data in one place, Sprout’s Tableau integration will help you best tell the story of your brand’s success on social and beyond.

Ready to try the Sprout Social Salesforce Integration?

From customer insights to better service, the upsides of linking your social presence with your CRM are crystal clear.

Thankfully, getting up and running with the Sprout Social Salesforce integration can be done sooner rather than later. Our platform makes it a breeze to beef up your tech stack while bringing your team closer together.

If you haven’t already, we invite you to request a demo of our Service Cloud integration or get setup via the AppExchange.

Don’t forget to take a peek at our other business integrations to see how else Sprout can help you level up your company.

The post How the Sprout Social Salesforce integration strengthens your team appeared first on Sprout Social.

]]> 16 unexpected ways to use WhatsApp for business https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-use-whatsapp-for-business/ Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:55:34 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=159002/ Conversational marketing is on the rise, driven largely by consumers’ increasing expectations for convenience and tailored digital experiences. In fact, 90% of global consumers Read more...

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]]> Conversational marketing is on the rise, driven largely by consumers’ increasing expectations for convenience and tailored digital experiences. In fact, 90% of global consumers say they’ll spend more with companies that personalize the service they offer.

Coupled with recent government- and self-imposed restrictions on in-person shopping, more brands than ever before are turning to WhatsApp and similar messaging platforms to interact with customers in meaningful ways.

Today, millions of brands are using WhatsApp Business to build personal connections with consumers at scale. In this article, we’ll establish the growing importance of WhatsApp across business functions (not just marketing), showcase the ways some brands are using the app and highlight a few innovative tips for making the most of the network.

The benefits of using WhatsApp for business

For brands that use WhatsApp to engage with customers, there are a number of clear benefits.

Inventive ways to use WhatsApp for business

WhatsApp is more than just a place to answer one-off customer questions. Consider these ideas for integrating WhatsApp into your social media, sales or customer service strategies.

  • Optimize your profile: Use your WhatsApp business profile to share important information about your brand and provide answers to common customer questions.
  • Use digital catalogs: Create a digital catalog to help your customers discover your products or services.
  • Support customers: You can significantly reduce your reliance on call centers by outsourcing simple customer requests and queries to a WhatsApp-powered chatbot or digital assistant.
  • Share content via the Status feature: Use the Status feature to share content the same way you already do in your Facebook or Instagram Stories.
  • Develop creative marketing campaigns: Engage customers with an out-of-the-box marketing campaign.
  • Replicate core business processes: Identify key areas of your business that might be possible to replicate on WhatsApp.
  • Level up with ads: Use Facebook and Instagram ads that click to WhatsApp to initiate customer conversations that lead to sales.

7 WhatsApp Business account features to use

Once you create your WhatsApp Business profile, you’ll find a suite of tools you can use to scale your 1:1 messaging strategy on the platform. Here are seven that can help you make the most out of your presence on WhatsApp:

1. Quick replies

Quick replies are a great way to take some of the work out of addressing those frequently asked questions, like “when are you open?” or “is this in stock?”.

To set one up, all you have to do is click Quick Replies under the Business Tools section of WhatsApp. From there, you can create up to 50 unique replies that you can access via keyboard shortcuts.

A word to the wise: Start with 5-10 Quick Replies and add more as needed. That will make your new shortcuts easier to remember and use when talking to customers.

2. Automatic away messages

Adding 1:1 messaging to your strategy doesn’t mean you need to be available 24/7. You can use away messages to set appropriate expectations with your customers and to give yourself a break as needed.

Away messages can be triggered by a few different scenarios, including:

  • When a customer messages you outside of business hours
  • During specific periods, like holidays or extended closures
  • When receiving high volumes of inbound messages

When you set up an away message, be sure to clearly state when a customer can expect to hear back from you. Remove as much ambiguity from the situation as possible for an improved customer experience.

3. Contact and message Labels

You can use labels to organize inbound messages and contacts on WhatsApp, similarly to how you might use labels to organize your email inbox.

When it comes to creating a label strategy, it’s a choose your own adventure game. However, if you want to keep your social media response times low, we recommend that you create a label specifically for unresolved issues. This will help keep them top of mind as you work to find the answer to a customer’s question.

4. Catalogs and collections

Use your WhatsApp Business account to drive social commerce sales by creating an inventory catalog within the app. Aside from the product title, all additional fields—price, description, website link, product code—are optional, so you can make your listing unique to your sales process.

You can also use collections to sort your catalog for easier browsing. For example, you can create a holiday-specific collection or one that features products currently on sale.

5. Catalog links

Once you create a catalog, you can share items in your catalog in conversations with customers. All you have to do is find the item you’d like to share and click Send link via WhatsApp Business.

Use this tool if a customer is asking about a specific item or to provide alternatives for items that have sold out. You can also use it to send loyal customers updates on items that have gone on sale.

6. Cart

While you can drive customers directly to your site using WhatsApp Business’s catalog feature, you can also create a more seamless checkout experience by encouraging them to complete their purchase in-app using the cart tool.

All you have to do is enable the Add to Cart feature within your catalog and your customers can handle the rest from there.

7. Broadcast lists

If a customer adds your business to their address book on WhatsApp, you can add them to a broadcast list. These lists help you send the same message to multiple customers at once, saving you a lot of time and effort.

Use this tool sparingly and with SMS marketing best practices in mind. If you use it too often, you risk alienating customers who appreciate your business enough to consider it a personal contact.

WhatsApp Business account vs. WhatsApp Business API

If you’ve been looking into setting up a WhatsApp Business account, you’ve probably also come across information on the WhatsApp Business API (also known as WhatsApp Business Platform).

Think of this as the next evolution of a WhatsApp Business account, designed for medium and large businesses to manage conversational marketing at a wider scale. The WhatsApp Business API provides access to the tools listed above, along with advanced marketing and customer care features, including:

  • Multi-agent access
  • Profile verification
  • Multimedia message templates
  • Message variables for personalization
  • Interactive messages

Of course, advanced tools come at an advanced price point. WhatsApp Business API also has a conversation-based pricing model whereas WhatsApp Business Accounts are free. Businesses using the WhatsApp Business API receive 1,000 free conversations per month, with monthly rates increasing depending on the number of user- and business-initiated messages sent within the billing period.

16 brands that demonstrate how to expertly use WhatsApp for business

Brands are using WhatsApp in a variety of ways that expand their customer-facing and internal capabilities. The following examples highlight use cases in customer service, financial services, marketing, human resources and pipeline growth.

Customer service

1. Vodafone, a German telecommunications company, has embraced WhatsApp for customer messaging, reaching more than 200,000 customers via this channel each month. Their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, TOBi, recognizes more than 250 customer needs and will only pass requests over to employees if it encounters an issue it is not equipped to solve. More than half of these interactions result in a solution for the customer, removing the need for live customer service support in many cases.

Vodofone's chatbot Tobi helps with simple customer service requests

2. Estée Lauder was the first major beauty brand to use WhatsApp to offer personalized skincare consultations for customers. Liv, an AI chatbot, was developed in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to replace over-the-counter consultations customers previously had in department stores. These digital conversations help customers understand how to use the company’s products and gather tips for maintaining an effective skincare regimen.

Estee Lauder's chatbot Liv helps with simple customer service requests

3. Nissan Saudi Arabia, looking to engage younger customers and reduce its reliance on call centers, began using WhatsApp to handle inquiries and nurture sales. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, people under 30 years old make up nearly three-fourths of the population. To reach that market, Nissan developed an automated chatbot powered by WhatsApp that could answer simple customer questions without the need to transfer them to the call center. After the launch of the chatbot, leads increased 390% and inbound calls were reduced by 33%.

Nissan Saudi Arabia's chatbot helps with simple customer service requests via WhatsApp

Financial services

4. One of Spain’s leading insurance providers, Mutua Madrileña, offers personalized messaging for customers via WhatsApp on more than 1,000 topics. In the first six months of using this new channel for customer support, the company had received nearly half a million messages, making up 23% of digital customer inquiries. In late 2020, the brand became the first insurer in the country to allow customers to submit automobile accident claims via their WhatsApp virtual assistant, resulting in a process that is now 30% faster.

mutua madrilena uses whatsapp for banking

5. WhatsApp banking is also a thing. Many banks, primarily in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are using the app to make banking simpler and more convenient for customers. India’s ICICI Bank and Pakistan’s HBL Bank both use the app to answer customer questions and to conduct basic transactions.

hbl bank uses whatsapp for banking

6. Mukuru, one of the largest money transfer providers in Africa, realized more than $1 million in reduced SMS costs after implementing customer service via WhatsApp. It also improved the reliability and security of wire transfers for the financially excluded communities it serves across the continent. With WhatsApp available, consumers can reduce their dependence on mobile banking apps that traditionally use more unpredictable unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) protocols that don’t require an internet connection. Since the introduction of WhatsApp, the brand’s customer satisfaction has jumped from 65% to 80%.

7. Tikkie, a Dutch peer-to-peer payment app (similar to Venmo or Zelle), created their own set of 11 stickers for their WhatsApp users. The stickers allowed customers a fun way of communicating with each other to thank someone for paying or to remind them to do so.

tikkie created its own whatsapp stickers to engage customers

Marketing campaigns

8. Absolut Vodka, a Swedish spirits brand, used WhatsApp to publicize an in-person product launch event in Argentina. Customers were encouraged to message a chatbot doorman named Sven to try to convince “him” they deserved one of two available tickets. This campaign resulted in more than 1,000 messages from 600 individuals over three days.

9. Carrefour Group, a French-based big box store chain, uses WhatsApp to provide digital coupon catalogs to its client base. These offers were previously printed, but the company wanted to offset those costs and have better targeting capabilities based on customers’ locations and preferences. By inputting their zip code into a chatbot, customers can be directed to their nearest store and also receive tailored deals straight to their phone. According to Meta, 45% of users now engage with the digital catalog versus 10% who open the catalog via email.

carrefour group uses whatsapp to share digital coupons with customers

10. The Brazilian arm of Hellmann’s, a mayonnaise brand, launched a campaign via WhatsApp to provide its users with on-demand cooking advice delivered by culinary professionals. The campaign, called WhatsCook, allowed customers to converse in real time with chefs to get detailed instruction, answers to their questions, or specific assistance for preparing their meals.

Hellmann's Brazil created a marketing campaign called WhatsCook that allowed users to ask chefs questions via WhatsApp

11. Adidas’ 100% Unfair Predator campaign, launched via WhatsApp, helped the brand engage with a core set of customers: footballers. Users were allowed to chat with Adidas to request a professional athlete join their local teams for a single game. For the lucky teams chosen, Adidas-sponsored players showed up in the company’s new Predator20 Mutator shoes.

Adidas engaged with customers via WhatsApp to promote a new shoe release

Human resources

12. BASF Group, a German chemical production company, uses WhatsApp to engage potential recruits. Anilina, a digital career assistant in the form of a chatbot, helps to answer candidates’ questions quickly and on the spot. For more involved conversations, candidates can reach out to representatives Monday through Friday via WhatsApp chat.

BASF uses a WhatsApp-powered chatbot for their recruiting efforts.

13. Logistics company Deutsche Post DHL Group allows candidates to apply to open positions directly from WhatsApp, eliminating the need to fill out lengthy and cumbersome online forms. The company deployed the chatbot to reach their target candidates where they are via a more user-centric application process.

Pipeline growth

14. French newspaper Le Monde used WhatsApp’s status feature to target customers in French-speaking African countries. The company posts content to its status, which is viewable for 24 hours (similar to an Instagram Story), three to four times a day. About 20% of the brand’s follower base typically consumes this content, and over time, Le Monde Afrique has grown its WhatsApp followers by 10,000.

15. Triya, a Brazilian beachwear brand, uses WhatsApp to converse with its customers and also to send order information like receipts and tracking information. After doubling down on their presence on the app, the company 5Xed their annual sales.

16. Centaline Property, one of Hong Kong’s largest real estate brokerages, uses WhatsApp to qualify leads more quickly and increase their sales pipeline. The company integrated the network with its property recommendation engine to allow leads to be funneled to the appropriate agent, along with each customer’s information and communication history. The use of key WhatsApp features like List Messages and Reply Buttons help Centaline Property personalize their outreach, resulting in a 27% increase in sales conversions.

Centaline Property uses WhatsApp to qualify leads more quickly and increase their sales pipeline

How will you use WhatsApp for business?

Conversational marketing is here to stay. The majority of customers expect it, and companies that strategically engage their audiences via channels like WhatsApp are better positioned to take advantage of the growth it makes possible.

If you’re looking for even more opportunities to use social messaging to build stronger customer relationships, this interview with Martha O’Byrne-O’Reilly, head of messaging developer partnerships at Meta, should give you some ideas.

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]]> The social media customer service statistics brands need to know in 2022 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-customer-service-statistics/ Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:05:02 +0000 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/?p=156778/ What does it mean to have exceptional customer service? Automated phone systems? Website chatbots? Help guides? These ease your customer support teams’ workload, but Read more...

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]]> What does it mean to have exceptional customer service? Automated phone systems? Website chatbots? Help guides? These ease your customer support teams’ workload, but they don’t always cater to the needs of your customers—especially if they have a unique or urgent issue. When this happens, they don’t want to click through a series of irrelevant options or read through useless FAQs.

They want to speak to a human as soon as possible, and guess where they go to achieve this? Social media.

The number of US social media users is expected to surpass 308 million in 2023 (up over 6 million from 2022 projections). So brands—now’s the time to build a social customer care strategy (if you don’t already have one).

Not sure where to start?

In this piece, we’ll discuss leading social media customer service statistics and how to use them to build stronger relationships in 2023.

How do customers use social media for support?

Brands have several options for delivering customer support, but the one that appeals most to consumers is social media. From 2020 to 2021 alone, the volume of consumers who preferred using social messaging for customer service jumped an impressive 110%.

As customers continue to flock to social for their support needs, it will take more effort to maintain speedy social media response times. Be careful—if you fail to offer timely resolutions on social, almost half of consumers may unfollow your brand. Even worse, social media trends show that over a third will talk about the experience with their family and friends.

So how are customers using social channels to receive support from brands?

“About 70% of my customers reached out to me through social media channels, the other 30% by email,” says Zoila Streich, Co-Founder of Independent Fashion Bloggers and former fashion business owner. “Most questions are about product availability and payment methods, but a few are feedback about the products or the buying process.”

You’ll also find customers using it to report service outages:

Or to point out issues with shipments and deliveries:

It’s disheartening to get negative feedback, but being respectful and helpful to each customer’s request will help in the long run.

Combining a great product or service with excellent support sets you up for more positive remarks from customers:

Make sure to prepare for the ebbs and flows of incoming customer support requests. New product launches or promotions lead to an influx of sales, which means more opportunities for inbound questions, so have your social media presence properly staffed.

“The volume of customers using our social media customer support fluctuates between 40% to 60%, depending on promotions,” says Yuvi Alpert, Founder, Creative Director and CEO of jewelry brand Noémie. “Because we drive people to our social media profiles through other channels, such as our newsletter, many of the questions we receive come through those platforms.”

How important is social media customer service to consumers?

Social media has flipped the balance of power between brands and consumers. Only on social can people compare a brand’s support practices to its competitors in less than a few clicks. If a business providing similar products or services is offering better help, Sprout Social’s Index™ found that 30% of consumers say they’d choose the competitor.

The public nature of social media support has influenced many brands to rethink their roster of standard support channels. More than half say that private/direct messaging plays a role in their customer care strategy.

With social media customer service stats like these, there’s only one thing to do: improve your social media A-game, so you don’t fall into the trenches of negative reviews.

Being consistent with your customer support builds trust and loyalty. Some will even go out of their way to show their praises in public (hello, social proof).

Having stellar customer support is essential to both customers and brands. But manually responding to every message—especially when you have multiple social media accounts and thousands of customers—is not sustainable.

With a tool like Sprout Social, customer care teams can organize and filter incoming messages across platforms, triage responses and view critical customer information all in one place.

A screenshot of Sprout Social's Smart Inbox feature.

Start your free Sprout trial

How quickly do brands need to reply to customer service messages on social?

Being present on social media is great. But having a fast response rate sets apart the “best in class” brands from the “I’m unfollowing you because your customer service is horrible” brands.

How fast is fast enough? In many cases, it depends on the industry and the situation.

For instance, Yuvi Alpert finds a day is fast enough during promotions. “It is critical that we answer those questions within 24 hours. We found that allowing more time to elapse lowers customer interest. By offering prompt responses, we see dramatic increases in sales of featured items.”

But what do customers say the proper response time is for social media customer support?

Our latest Sprout Social Index™ data found that 76% of consumers expect a reply within 24 hours on social.

A data visualization explaining how quickly consumers expect a response on social compared to brands' average response times.

At one time, taking a day or more to respond to a customer was acceptable. But now most demand instant access and gratification. And if you’re considered a high-priced product or service, then you definitely must respond quickly. Customers who pay more for a service expect a higher level of social customer care.

When MeUndies set a goal of replying to all messages within a 60-minute window, they needed an alternative to responding natively through social platforms. They turned to Sprout’s Smart Inbox to get an all-encompassing view of their Instagram direct messages, mentions and comments in one stream.

A screenshot of Sprout's Smart Inbox tool, filtered to show Instagram DMs.

Now, be mindful that a fast response isn’t the primary goal—it’s to resolve customers’ issues. Unfortunately, some brands are quick to reply but slow to resolve. And when that happens, unhappy customers will let you (and all their followers) know:

Delta is replying, but the issue is lingering too long. Address customer problems fast or risk losing current and potential customers.

Facebook customer service stats

Facebook is the number one platform where consumers follow brands, so it’s easy to reach out whenever needed. Around 69% of Facebook Messenger users say communicating with brands here builds confidence in the company.

If your customers are on Facebook, then you should be too.

OLIPOP, a tonic brand, uses Facebook to offer direct customer support. “I’d estimate at least 50% of our customers will message us questions or comment directly on our posts across Facebook and Instagram,” says Melanie Bedwell, eCommerce Manager for OLIPOP. “Ideally, we try to reply instantly, but if that’s not possible, then at least during the same day.”

Here are examples of their engagement with happy customers:

Customer sharing positive feedback on Olipop's Facebook page, featuring a response from the brand.
Screenshot of thread on Olipop's Facebook page, directing a customer to their store locator tool.

They also use opportunities to promote their in-store options (and their tool to locate one near you).

Twitter customer service stats

Twitter is where you’ll find most people headed to compliment or complain about a brand. About 64% of Twitter users even say they’d rather Tweet a brand than call them.

We partnered with Twitter to learn more about how consumers are connecting with brands on the social network and found that:

  • 53% of Twitter users find it helpful to see how brands answer questions or solve issues publicly.
  • 51% of surveyed Twitter users report their experiences communicating with brands on Twitter makes them feel more favorable toward the brand.
  • 1 in 3 (34%) Twitter users purchased a product or service after a positive customer interaction on Twitter.

Why do people reach out to brands on Twitter? All sorts of reasons, but the most popular reasons to seek out customer service on the network are product defectiveness (37%), order issues (29%) and bad in-person experiences (29%).

While it’s great to have this two-way communication with customers, a customer service-filled feed can distract from other campaigns and promotions your brand is trying to highlight. This is why some brands stand up separate Twitter accounts dedicated to customer care.

“Businesses use social media for a variety of purposes, including marketing, engaging with customers, interacting with influencers and more,” says Keenan Beavis, founder of Longhouse Media. “That’s why having a distinct social media account dedicated to customer support inquiries is so important. You don’t want your advertising, likes and shares to bury client demands and questions. ”

We see companies like Belkin using this approach. The consumer electronics brand notifies users to ask questions using its dedicated Twitter customer service channel.

Belkin's Twitter bio

If you visit Belkin on Twitter, you’ll see they go over and beyond for their customers. They even offer multi-lingual support.

Improve customer experiences with social media customer service

You created your business profiles on the social channels your customers frequent. But don’t just use them to promote your products and services. It’s a channel where today’s consumers expect customer support.

Be ready to engage with both customers and prospects by creating separate handles and using Sprout’s social customer service tools to manage it all in one place. Timely alerts + quick responses = happy customers. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Ready to build relationships with your customers? Sign up for Sprout’s free trial to get started.

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