Businesses must go beyond simply addressing problems promptly. They must provide customers with the tailored service they have come to expect from other platforms, similar to how a barista at your local coffee shop greets you with “the usual?” upon your arrival.
In the initial stages of social media customer support, quickness was the key measure of success. As of 2022, a survey found that 77% of customers anticipate a response from companies within a day, while 13% expect a reply within minutes, as per The Sprout Social Index™. The most recent Index report indicates that while consumers still value fast responses, they are increasingly prioritizing high-quality customer service, with 70% wanting businesses to offer tailored responses to their service inquiries.
However, organizational barriers, inadequate comprehension of the significance of social customer support, and cumbersome technology infrastructure impede companies from providing top-tier service. Executives who neglect to address these problems risk losing revenue and jeopardizing their customers’ allegiance.
Customers’ expectations for your service include both excellence and promptness.
In a world where social DMs have become a form of texting in their own right, brands replying quickly to customers is table stakes. Consumers want more than a fast response, they want the right response. One that means they don’t have to reach out again or deal with another issue a few weeks later. They want to feel like their problem is your first priority.
Take this stat from our latest Index report: A majority of consumers (76%) place equal value on brands that respond quickly to customer needs and brands that prioritize customer support.
Regrettably, a majority of customers feel that they are not receiving top-notch service. A study by Zendesk CX Trends Research reveals that 62% of customers think companies could improve their efforts in offering tailored services. With just 30% of companies having established processes and tools for proactive customer engagement on social media, this lack of satisfaction is not unexpected.
But that doesn’t mean consumers are making concessions or lowering their standards. The same Zendesk report highlighted that 70% of consumers expect anyone they interact with to have full context surrounding their customer service inquiries. What good is meeting your response time service-level agreements (SLAs) if you’re not actually resolving customers’ issues or leaving a mediocre impression?
Read more about how top brands provide exceptional customer service and support.
Typical obstacles to providing top-notch customer support
Though 88% of business leaders agree social media is a critical tool in providing customer care and service, there are still knowledge gaps that prevent teams from accessing the tools and resources they need, and gaining stakeholder buy-in.
Here’s how social media marketers and care teams describe their greatest challenges to delivering exceptional customer care and experiences:
The expectation to constantly be available and responsive.
According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 63% of customer care professionals said a high volume of customer care requests is their most prominent obstacle. As one member of The Arboretum, Sprout’s online community for social professionals, put it, “The most significant challenge I face when managing customer care on social media is the expectation to be available to answer questions 24/7. Plus, pressure to make sure each answer is 100% correct and can’t be misinterpreted in any way that could reflect poorly on the business.”
Another added, “Social platforms have become essential for customer support. However, it can quickly become overwhelming for businesses due to the sheer number of inquiries they receive and the expectation for quick responses from a real person.”
In an era where customers want to be able to connect with a service agent the moment they need help, it’s critical to have agents available at all hours. But without proper staffing and handoff, this can stretch social and service teams thin and lead to burnout, on top of dissatisfied customers who don’t feel prioritized or like they’re getting an authentic response.
Departmental and technological silos
When it comes to ownership of customer care in 2024, only 8% of customer service teams plan to own this function exclusively. Shared ownership requires reimagining your teams’ entire approach to collaboration. From your tech stack to your internal workflows, pressure test each stage of your social customer care process to find out where silos are slowing service down, and where there’s too much strain on one team.
For example, social teams are often not equipped to handle complex customer service needs, but they’re often asked to do so anyway. As one member of The Arboretum described, “A social media manager doesn’t have the resources to resolve every customer complaint. Customers use social more and more for issue resolution, but there’s a solid wall between customer care (which leverages traditional communication channels) and social media engagement.”
Many concurred that teamwork within different departments at their organization is subpar. “The reason our team struggles to deliver prompt and efficient customer service is because of the insufficient and delayed communication between departments,” stated a social media marketer.
Lack of training and education
Social customer care is a new domain, with most teams struggling to keep up with best practices. According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse survey, 35% of businesses plan to hire additional agents and host additional training to improve the quality of customer interactions on social.
These shortcomings frequently stem from the perception that social customer support is a secondary responsibility, rather than a crucial aspect of the entire business. As a participant in The Arboretum observed, “Social media engagement is not perceived as a legitimate form of customer service and care. Interacting with customers and followers via comments and direct messages is not given the same level of respect or consideration as handling customer inquiries through email, phone, or face-to-face interactions.”
While social professionals and service teams understand that social customer care is key to resolving issues on channels where customers provide open, honest—and very public—feedback, internal education to other departments is needed to help others see its impact. Enable key stakeholders and senior leadership to see how the ability to interject, navigate and even control the conversation can help retain customers and build the bottom line. Ensure training and education is happening org-wide, not just for the marketing and service teams.
Not having the right tools
Numerous teams in the social and service sectors lack the necessary resources to deliver customer care that is both efficient and of high quality. Due to the fragmented technology stacks and varied communication channels, the task of providing customer care becomes akin to removing snow with a tiny spoon – it is awkward and ineffective.
Our Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey reveals many organizations’ most prominent challenges stem from technology breakdowns—48% are left with manual tasks that take up significant time, 41% with gaps in available customer care intel for agents to reference when handling requests and 26% cite a lack of technological resources. The lack of investment in customer care processes and tools to actively engage on social is a major hurdle to developing a sophisticated strategy.
An Arboretum member describes how not having the right tools impedes quality: “Customers appreciate personalized responses that address their specific concerns. However, doing this effectively on social media, where conversations can be disjointed and context may be lost, can be difficult.”
The Index indicates that half of marketers intend to adopt sophisticated social media management tools to enhance workflow productivity, indicating that leaders recognize the importance of technological investments in creating a unified customer experience. An increasing number of brands are recognizing the value of social media management software, not only for scheduling posts and analyzing data, but also as the main platform for managing social customer service.
How to provide high quality customer service, fast
What it takes to deliver memorable and positive customer experiences is changing. As customer expectations evolve, so too should the best practices your teams follow and the processes and tools you use.
These are practical measures to tackle obstacles and connect with customers at their current position.
Use AI and automation for support
Social care teams are hesitant to use AI, fearful that it could damage the relationships they’ve built with customers and make interactions seem less human. Nearly half of marketers (49%) say their top concern in regards to AI is job displacement or reduced human involvement in social media management, according to the Index.
The truth of the matter is that by intelligently utilizing AI to manage tasks such as responding to common customer queries, both marketers and service representatives will have the opportunity to dedicate more time to their most significant work. The Index reveals that 81% of marketers have already experienced a positive impact on their work due to AI, with benefits such as more time for creative pursuits (78%) and improved efficiency (73%). Additionally, 47% of marketers plan to start using AI in 2024 to handle basic customer questions and requests. It may seem contradictory, but the rise of new technologies can actually redistribute the time of care teams and assist them in meeting consumers’ desire for genuine interactions and human connections.
For example, in the Sprout Social platform, our Case Management solution enables your team to automatically create Cases for each social message that needs a reply—and route them to the right team or individual based on custom criteria and rules.
Every team within Sprout is provided with their own unique queue, allowing them to view all messages assigned to them and important information about each Case. Teams have the ability to access Cases through a designated pane located in the main navigation menu.
The Smart Inbox’s Case Management feature consolidates all messages from various social platforms into one unified feed. This inbox is equipped with additional functionalities that enable your team to address concerns swiftly, including AI-powered suggested responses for speedy replies, categorization tags for effective organization, and mass actions for efficient Case handling.
Here’s an example of how chatbots can be set up to help automate repetitive conversational tasks (like gathering information), resolve customer issues at a faster rate and provide 24/7 service, even when no agents are available.
Personalize the experience
Using name-only-personalization has been the extent of personalization for most of modern marketing (email, direct mail, etc). While using a customer’s name is a tried-and-true best practice, true personalization goes deeper. Consumers don’t want to be thought of as one of thousands (or millions) of people who receive the same canned response, they want to be seen as a VIP who deserves an experience that meets their unique needs.
Truly resolving customers issues starts with data, and finding meaningful data requires integrating social with other business intelligence software like your CRM. By having a centralized, 360-degree view of your customers, you will increase the quality of service you provide and break down departmental silos. This data will deliver key insights about your customers, from the first time they sent you a DM to the last time they made a purchase. Our Q3 Pulse Survey data reveals about 38% of customer care leaders indicated consolidating agent and customer data to guide business decisions was already at the top of their wishlist.
Sprout enriches your Salesforce CRM records with social data to provide a comprehensive view that enables your team to engage in real time with the right context. Notice how the sidebar is populated with Salesforce Service Cloud data in this example of an agent responding to a customer via the Smart Inbox.
Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view with other marketing data. By harnessing this intel, customer care and marketing leaders can work together to align on the business value of social customer care and elevate it into strategic planning conversations.
Use listening and social data to understand what your customers care about
Proactive customer care is the most effective. Knowing your customers’ concerns, frequent problems, and their perception of your brand will influence your customer care approach. Our Pulse Survey reveals that 23% of customer care leaders struggle with making decisions based on data, and an additional 37% are keen to implement social media management tools that enhance the significance and business influence of customer care.
By using a social media listening solution like Sprout Social, you can leverage AI to uncover critical customer insights. With Sprout’s suite of Listening tools, you can automatically sift through billions of data points to zero in on trends and key learnings you need to guide future strategy. For example, you can find out how your customers are reacting to your latest product launch through the Sentiment Analysis tool, and use that data to train your team and inform future product development.
Set a standard for exceptional customer service.
In this new generation of customer care, speed is no longer the only king. Responses don’t just need to be fast, they need to be thoughtful and tailored to an audience of one. As the volume of messages and mentions you receive rises, so too will customer expectations of your business on social. To stand out from the competition, you need to invest in the right training, processes and tools to propel your business forward.
Audit the tools and processes your organization currently uses to find gaps and redundancies. Build the case for shared ownership of customer care and access to social data. Identify the new skills you and your team need to lead a robust social care strategy. For help getting started, read the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™, and dive into the latest data about creating customer experiences that drive business value.
The post How to balance speed and quality customer service appeared first on Sprout Social.
Good customer service is essential for any business to succeed. It is important to provide customers with a positive experience that will keep them coming back. However, providing quality customer service can often be a challenge, especially when it comes to balancing speed and quality.
Speed is an important factor when it comes to customer service. Customers expect to have their questions answered quickly and efficiently. If they have to wait too long for a response, they may become frustrated and take their business elsewhere. On the other hand, providing quality customer service is also important. Customers want to feel valued and respected, and they want to know that their concerns are being taken seriously.
The key to balancing speed and quality in customer service is to focus on efficiency. Companies should strive to provide fast, accurate responses that address the customer’s needs. This can be achieved by having well-trained customer service representatives who are knowledgeable about the company’s products and services. Additionally, having a streamlined process in place can help ensure that customer inquiries are handled quickly and effectively.
Technology can also be used to help balance speed and quality in customer service. Automated systems can be used to quickly answer common questions, freeing up customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues. Additionally, social media can be used to quickly respond to customer inquiries and provide helpful information.
Finally, companies should strive to provide personalized customer service. Customers want to feel like they are being treated as individuals, not just another number. Taking the time to get to know customers and their needs can help ensure that they receive the best possible service.
Balancing speed and quality in customer service can be a challenge, but it is essential for any business to succeed. By focusing on efficiency, utilizing technology, and providing personalized customer service, companies can ensure that their customers receive the best possible experience.
Source: sproutsocial.com
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