4 Ways to Offer Outstanding Customer Service on Facebook

More than 8 in 10 adults say they would stop using a brand after just one bad experience. Bottom line, you have one shot to make a good impression, and then you must maintain stellar customer service moving forward.

In an era when shifting a customer experience from “average” to “wow” is worth 30-50% improvements in terms of increased likelihood to recommend a company and make repeat repurchases, proactive social care is critical. ¹
Harvard Business Review

Facebook recognizes that the volume of social customer care inquiries is not slowing down any time soon. It has set its sights on turning its business Pages into a full-service customer hub.”² If you want to stay ahead of your competition, it’s time to stop treating this popular platform as just a promotional tool and start delivering outstanding customer service on Facebook.

Here are four ways to take your Facebook customer service to the next level:

1. Be Responsive, Very Responsive

Facebook recognizes the importance of responding quickly to customers. They have even added a gamification element to their platform to encourage brands to respond quickly and consistently to private messages. To get the “Very responsive to messages” badge displayed prominently on your Page, you must have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes.

However, it’s not all fun and games when it comes to customer response. Social media users expect real-time replies, and they don’t give second chances. If you meet their expectations, they’re 86% more likely to spend more. If you fail, they’re more likely to complain about you to their friends, that’s after 8 in 10 of them stop using your product or service after just one bad experience. Believe it or not, studies even show that consumers would rather brands be quick than effective.⁴

Bottom line, the best way to improve your customer service on Facebook is to speed up response times. Here are three tactics to try:

• Spread staffing for 24/7 care rather than scheduling all of your agents at the same time. Customer satisfaction will improve even if you don’t have as many agents on staff during peak hours.
• Set expectations by automatically setting your Page’s messaging status to away when your business is closed.
• Reply immediately with the right information using Instant Replies. One of the easiest ways to get started is to create a welcome screen and a call-to-action that appears when people start a new chat message.

2. Make Technology Your Facebook Friend

The average social marketer spends nearly half of their workday in a tool.⁵ With good reason, social response tools make your agents’ day-to-day jobs easier and more efficient. Armed with the right tools to manage your customer’s experiences the right way, you’ll be one step closer to providing outstanding customer service on Facebook.

• Invest in a social media monitoring tool that scans posts and assigns priorities based on customized keywords, so agents work the most critical issues first.
• Make sure your tool is configurable for multiple languages.
• Take into consideration collaboration capabilities. Clear role assignments combined with an intuitive workflow will lead to processes that are more streamlined.

3. Look at the Full Picture

Based on Gartner research, only one percent of companies who regularly tap into stores of social and legacy customer data actually use it to its full potential.⁶ This data shows that most businesses are just assuming they know the wants, needs, and expectations of their customers. It’s time to close the gap. Social customer service solutions can give a deeper level of customer understanding through detailed customer profiles containing information across social networks, interests, and CRM systems. With a 360-degree view of the customer, you can assign cases rather than posts to your service agents for a more holistic customer experience. Also, your clients only need to convey the information once, and all of your agents have access to the answer.

4. Connect in an Instant

Did you know that one BILLION instant messages are sent between people and Facebook Pages each month?⁷ These brands know that Messenger offers a way to speak with customers in your company’s voice and tone, and do it at scale.⁸ Here are just three of the ways Facebook gives your brand to converse with people on Messenger:

• Set expectations by turning on messaging only when you can commit to responding to messages.
• Saved replies allow you to write, save and then re-use messages. These can be especially useful for commonly asked questions like your hours, email or phone number.
• Answer questions or concerns from your customers privately about your business, their orders or anything else.⁹

Need help managing your Facebook customer service? Lithium Social Media Management enables you to manage social campaigns and customer service on one platform. Our Social Response allows you to manage your entire social customer service with private, in-the-moment customer care; get powerful customer insights in real time, and offers highly customizable analytics on the go. You’ll share a single lens of the customer across your marketing and customer service touchpoints.

Want to see how it works? Request a demo.

Looking for more inspiration on how to elevate your social customer service strategy? See how Comcast's Digital Care team is revolutionizing digital customer experience, and check out our full list of 2017 Lithy Award Winners.

¹ Harvard Business Review - Your Company Should Be Helping Customers on Social
² Forbes - How Facebook Is Becoming A Customer Service Hub
³ J.D. Power - Poor Social Media Practices can Negatively Impact a Businesses' Bottom Line and Brand Image
⁴ Harvard Business Review - Turn Customer Care into “Social Care” to Break Away from the Competition
⁵ The Forrester Wave™: Social Relationship Platforms, Q2 2015 by Nate Elliott, April 20, 2015.
⁶ Gartner - How to Incorporate Social Data for CRM Into Your Quest for a 360-Degree View of the Customer
⁷ Facebook Messenger for Business
⁸ Facebook Messenger for Business
⁹ Facebook - Using Facebook Messenger to have Conversations