18 Best Practices a brand should follow for Customer delight Over Social Media

Researches have revealed that more and more people are using Media for their grievance redressal nowadays and the number of people using the traditional means of communications like phone, letters are dropping significantly. There is enough evidence that indicates that social media is not an option but has become a necessity nowadays for brands. Following are the best practices, a brand should adhere to delight clients-

1. Lesser TAT (Turnaround time)- According to a research, the customers who are replied within 60 minutes of time are happiest and most satisfied with the customer care so the lesser the turnaround time for addressing a customer grievance, the better it is.
2. Reply to all comments- Act on customer grievance instantly and answer swiftly so that the customer dissatisfaction can be contained
3. Frequent engagement- Engage in conversations with all the comments/conversations. It is always good to engage in conversations with consumers as it makes them feel heard and connected to the brand.
4. Personalised engagement- According to a stats, 68% of people said that they stopped using the brand because they thought that the brand didn’t care about them. Psychologically, a customer feels important and his ego is satisfied when a brand communicates with him in the form of chat/comments.
5. Analyze your audience- Address them with their name, have their phone numbers, email id and address in your customer database beforehand.
6. Do your homework properly- Before answering customer grievances, make sure to do your homework first about the issue( when it started, how can it be rectified)
7. Try to develop a tribe/community- It will help in creating a fan base for your brand. In case of some crisis, this fan base will always be there to support the brand.
8. Do the social Media audit- It is always a good thing to do the social media audit for your posts. Social Media audit can be done in two ways-Outbound content- It is important to do the audit so that any spelling errors, grammatical mistakes can be caught in time and brand can avoid being trolled on social media for this.Inbound content and template responses- Inbound content includes the comments and messages from customers in the form of grievance query or replies. Brands mostly have Templated responses prepared beforehand to reply to situation based queries but it is always good to check on these replies from time to time as some mistakes due to human error can’t be ruled out.
9. Swift and gentle responses- Avoid interacting in an argument with an agitated customer over social media. It doesn’t matter if the brand is at fault or not but answering them with calm tone can smoothen the mood and send a neutral reply
10. Spam control- Spams can easily irritate a customer so have a spam removal widget installed on your website.
11. Have a zero-tolerance policy against racism, Political slurs, abuses etc- Removing or not attending racist/abusive comments spreads among customers that the brand stands by human values and it doesn’t discriminates them on caste, creed or anything else.
12. Make a community standard guidelines for the consumer- It is important to make people aware of core values and community stand a company follows. It is important that it is shared publicly to the people.
13. Humanize your brand- People never like to deal with chatbots or automated replies for their grievances.
14. Train your customer care team on regular basis- Leave no loopholes and boundaries untouched. Not being prepared for worst case scenarios and the crisis is like suicidal for a brand so get your team prepared for any kind of situation.
15. Be open to change and feedback- It is always good to welcome any feedback from customers and imbibe it with immediate effect.
16. Charter out a plan to tackle crisis situation- Prepare a plan for any worst case scenarios. Make a plan A, B, C for full proof customer care support.
17. Time management- It is always the best thing to make a timesheet and structure of the team who are going to handle customer responses on weekends and off-hours. In this way, an unattended customer case can be avoided.
18. Escalation matrix- Creation of an escalation matrix based on the customer issues helps in a timely solution of the problem. Also, the creation of tiered approval is a good process to follow for complex kind of customer issue.