Using social media customer service can be, and in fact is, a very powerful way to address and resolve potential issues. Often times people will post disparaging remarks via social media channels when they have a less than pleasant experience with a company, product or service and your company absolutely has to be listening and watching.
A quick and thoughtful response can turn a bad experience into an excellent one in the customer’s eyes very easily. In fact, social media customer service works quite well, but you have to be listening. You have to pay attention to your social media streams. You actually have to go so far as to not only watch your own timelines, but watch hashtags of your company or brand. For instance, on Twitter, someone might not be following you and you are probably not following them, and they might not know your @UserName either so they just mention your company or brand by name (often people will use a hashtag in this case), so you have to put yourself in a position to see their comment by actively searching for it. You can set up searches in most Twitter clients and either follow the feed or have it send you an alert when a tweet is posted with your name, hashtag or search term in it.
When you see a customer service opportunity arise in social media channels there is a specific way to handle it. You should acknowledge the issue publicly (through the open social media channel) and then invite the other person to take the conversation offline. Invite the person to send you details about their problem via email or have them call you directly. This does two important things. It shows not only the individual, but both your followers and theirs, that you are aware of the issue and are concerned about that persons experience. It also then keeps the details of that issue private.
You can not stop at resolving obvious problems or issues that show up however. You have to also connect with people using your brand as well, even if they aren’t voicing concerns. One excellent way to do this is by claiming your business on Foursquare, connecting it to Twitter and engaging people as they check in at your business location. I recently had a prime example of this of my own. I use Foursquare a lot and recently checked in at Sports Authority as I was there to buy a pair of tennis shorts. Sports Authority saw my check in and the next day they publicly asked me about my experience in their store. Since they asked, I took the opportunity to mention that I had an issue and they responded with an acknowledgement and their email address asking me to let them know what was going on. Home run!! I wasn’t too worked up over it to begin with, but now it is a non-issue because they addressed it and I am now even more loyal than before.
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