Since the beginning of the pandemic, social media has grown exponentially as the consumers’ preferred form of service communication with brands. According to Hubspot, 87% of surveyed digital marketers in 2023 say that most brands will offer customer service directly through social media.
With social media becoming integral to a holistic and successful customer experience strategy, more companies are seeking ways to build social channels into their frameworks. However, utilizing social media isn’t just about posting regularly on your Facebook business page or responding to DMs on Instagram.
By creating an integrated, strategic social media strategy, brands can create a powerful and effective CX that provides top-tier service, boosts retention, and increases ROI. Here are three areas to focus on when integrating social media into your CX strategy.
1. Understanding Your Customer
One of the most powerful ways to utilize social media in your CX strategy is by capturing customer insights and feedback through social media listening and social monitoring.
Social listening, or the practice of monitoring conversations related to your brand across social media channels, provides deep insights into your audience’s behaviors, desires, pain points, and expectations within the greater context of your industry. On the other hand, social monitoring takes a more targeted and narrow approach by tracking specific feedback and direct mentions of your brand, product, and services.
Think of it like this: social monitoring tells you what is being said about your brand, while social listening helps you understand why. Let’s say the CX team of an airline company is tracking mentions of their brand name across Twitter. Social monitoring reveals customer dissatisfaction, to which the company can reactively respond by reaching out to those customers. However, by utilizing social listening across all channels, the company identifies a greater dissatisfaction with industry-wide practices. As a result, they proactively develop a CX strategy that differentiates them from their competitors.
2. Providing Customer Support
Between 2020 and 2021 alone, the number of customers who opted for social media as a preferred form of customer assistance increased by 110%. When it comes to keeping up a competitive customer experience, maintaining open communication on social media is a must, rather than a nice-to-have.
Strategically utilizing social media isn’t just about creating as many accounts as possible. Many brands find the most success by holding a steady and consistent presence on one or two channels, rather than spreading themselves thin across several platforms. Customer support outsourcing is becoming increasingly popular as a way to support a CX strategy across social media.
Additionally, when integrating social media into your customer service strategy, consider that creating an omnichannel customer experience is your key to success. This means that customers should be able to take an issue across multiple channels, such as social media, chat, or email, and seamlessly pick up where they left off. Ensure that your customer support data is integrated and connected across all channels. Not only will this create a stellar customer experience, but it will also help your team track progress.
3. Building Brand Engagement and Trust
The need for human connection across digital and customer interactions continues to be at the forefront of customers’ needs. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen that the most successful brands are the ones that continually seek new ways to build engagement and foster trust.
90% of social marketers say that an active online community is your key to keeping up in today’s market. By engaging directly with customers through social media, you open the lines of communication for resolving issues, building product knowledge, and gathering customer feedback. In today’s increasingly digital world, active and attentive engagement not only builds trust when it comes to establishing your presence, but also proves to your audience that their input and experience matters.
Build a CX Strategy for Success
Integrating social media into your CX strategy can help you gain powerful customer insights, build customer trust, and increase your ROI. With strategic insights and decades of experience, our customer support experts are here to help. To get started, connect with our team today!
