Twitter Customer Service (almost all social platforms for that matter)

Long time no publish, sorry.

Folks continue to give feedback and input on how to practice/execute Customer Service on Social Media, especially on Twitter and it is typically the same song and dance. That’s OK if that’s what you are looking for, but sometimes you just want the simple tried and true details of what is possible and what works.

Well, here they are (my opinions of course):

1. Hire the “right” agents – absolutely critical since you will be asking so much from them
2. Train them to meet the needs of your business, your brand AND your customers
3. Measure their performance, measure their adherence to your plans and support them when they need it
4. Staff them when your customers need them (you may need to monitor prior to full launch)
5. Answer the customers questions, simple. Do not just send them a link, answer the question directly as best as possible
6. Don’t just send a link, that is not an answer, if you can include a link, do it, but only after you answer them first
7. Answer your customers quickly, time is critical and responding outside of 30 – 60 minutes will more than likely result in a follow-up asking where their answer is (more work that you will need to deal with)
8.  Measure your success in responses, accolades and your response time
9. After ALL of that, adjust where needed, things change all the time and flexibility is critical

Some of this you have heard before, but there are downsides if you don’t hire the right people, respond quickly and just provide links in responses vs. directly answering the question.

Go forth and support your customers to the best of your ability and they will be loyal to you, your brand and what you are trying to do.