In recent years, social media has effectively taken everything that we know about customer service, and turned it upside-down. Online, there is no place for your company to hide. If you leave your customers unsatisfied, you are pretty much guaranteed to see a rant or rave about it on a social media network somewhere. Consumers are quick to embrace this power that they have received- the power of mass exposure. And this can leave you and your company feeling, well, massively exposed.
One of the most valuable things that you can do as a business owner today is to develop a specific and detailed social media customer relationship management program in order to foster a positive rapport with your customers. There are plenty of small business owners out there who stumble across negative threads about their business, and do not know how to conduct themselves in response, nor do they have a plan for how to handle this type of negative exposure. If nothing is said, the problem is guaranteed to escalate. If the business owner poses as a “fake” customer to post a contradicting positive comment, the falsehood almost always shines through. However, with a plan in place, you can quickly change a customer’s negative experience into a positive one without taking on a false identity.
Oftentimes, what fuels a customer’s discontent in the first place is a company’s lack of response. For example, if a customer writes to a shoe company that he bought a pair of leather shoes that disintegrated the first day he wore them, and receives no response, it is likely that he will post a negative thread about the company on a public forum. Noteworthy is the fact that the likely focus of his thread will be the simple lack of response and lack of customer care from the shoe company, not the lack of quality in the shoes. The relationship that your company establishes with a customer is equally as important, if not more, than the product itself.
When your social media team responds to a customer service issue, such as a negative comment posted on your Facebook page, you must have a specific plan in place. First, ensure that your company has access to each customer’s contact information. A designated customer service representative should contact this customer personally in order to assist him or her. A social media customer service representative should always leave the customer with his or her own email address and personal phone extension. While social media allows your company to be available and accessible to consumers, you should never doubt the power of personal one-on-one contact.
When aligning your social media customer relationship management plan, insure that your customer service representative will follow through appropriately with the customer. For example, if a replacement pair of leather shoes has been sent to the customer, the representative should call the customer back in 2 weeks to make sure this pair has not disintegrated. Insuring that the same CSR checks back with the customer is necessary. We have all had the experience of being transferred to 4 different reps on a customer service line before, and it’s an experience that leaves you steamy under the collar, isn’t it? Insuring that a customer is able to correspond with one dedicated representative allows him or her to establish a comfortable, trusted relationship with your company. Enable your customer to provide a satisfied testimonial once you have corrected the problem, and you will see that the level of attentiveness you have provided is reflected in the customer’s new feedback.
As you continue developing and refining your social media customer service methods, make sure that your plan evolves as social media evolves. For example, if you use Twitter as a forum for customer’s to post feedback to your company, how do you handle the fact that Twitter is always on? Will you designate customer response hours in your bio? Will you designate a CSR to Tweet when the CSRs will be offline for the day? Allow your methods to evolve and 
develop over time in order to provide the best customer service possible.
Debra Leitl is the Mentor in Residence at eMentormarketing.com. You can find her on twitter @MentorMarketing. Her specialty is interactive marketing with a focus on ecommerce and online marketing strategy.
if you open a business, customer service is always a must. .
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Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long..
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