By now you’ve heard all the talk about social media and why you should be using it for your business. If by chance you haven’t then check out our article on “Why You Should Be Using Social Media For Your Hotels“.
Social media platforms can be very effective tools both for advertising and advanced customer service options. But there are a lot of common misconceptions floating around out there about social media and it’s use. New ventures into social media can fail, as no business venture is perfect. It’s also important to remember that gaining exposure through a social media platform takes time, quite a bit of time in fact. For those who are not patient, it’s a bad field to get into. Check out our article on “Social Media Misconceptions” for more information; especially if you’re considering a venture into the social media field.
Hire A Social Media Team
Believe it or not social media isn’t all fun and games. Especially if a business has decided to use their social media platform of choice as a customer service option for their clientele.
Running a proper social media platform for a business is tedious work, and should be done by a professional; not a 14 year old with a penchant for myspace HTML programming. That means if you’re planning on running a social media platform you should hire a professional team to take care of your profiles and accounts. Pros know what they are doing and provided you’ve hired a real one, they also know how to network using social media and garner a large audience and increase traffic.
Which means before attempting anything in this tutorial by yourself outsource help from a real social media professional or plan to hire a complete social media management team.
How To Utilize Social Media As A Customer Service Platform
When customers have a problem, especially in the hospitality industry, they love to hear feedback as soon as possible. Introducing a social media based customer service option will allow customers to publish problems and issues in realtime, and provided your social media team responds in a timely manner the answer to their problem can be attained more quickly than traditional methods.
Here are some important things to remember when using social media as a customer service platform:
- Always remember to answer quickly and efficiently.
- Remember everything you say and do is visible to the public; that means anyone can see your responses!
- If the customer is being personal, answer personally; if the customer is being professional, answer professionally.
- Stay positive in every post and status message, even if you’re current attitude is anything but.
- Double check all posts and responses before making them. Once made, they CANNOT be retracted even if they are deleted, public traces still exist.
But all of the above suggestions are useless if you don’t know exactly how to answer your customers using a social media platform. To help out we’re going to provide some more specific examples.
Friendly Responses Using Twitter
Using social media to interact with customers and the community is not just about fixing problems, it’s also about being part of the greater good. Through social media people interact with each other across the globe hundreds of times daily! New businesses use social platforms like Twitter to pass on great news or new product releases which are then spread virally through “retweets” or people reposting the same news.
As you can see in the image below user “Oceantrav” happily stated how his accommodations at a Hyatt hotel were. He also passed along additional information that it was his birthday, making his response a little more personal.
Hyatt’s Twitter concierge team responded quickly with the following message:
If you notice Hyatt kept it’s response professional while also personally wishing Oceantrav a Happy Birthday. In a marketing sense their response was perfect. First they acknowledged “Oceantrav’s” original message and gave proper credit and then they continued by throwing in a subtle promotion to the proper hotel in question. In the case of the example above the proper hotel was the Hyatt “Olive8″.
A basic guideline for answering friendly responses would be to greet, acknowledge who the tweet is to and what their message was, and then promote in the classiest way possible.
Troubleshooting Responses Using Twitter
When a customer has an issue and brings the problem forward to management or even in front of the public eye they usually have one related desire; and thats to have their problem fixed. Most customer service issues blow up and get worse over time when they could have been prevented quickly and quietly. Of course there will always be the customer who is impossible to please no matter what, but believe it or not they are the exception here.
When troubleshooting customer issues on Twitter always remember to respond as quickly as possible; this is the biggest reason we recommend hiring a social media management team. One of the only ways social media platforms will work as a customer service option for businesses is if the business responses to customer complaints remain quick and witty. If a business takes way to long to respond to a customers complaint then the entire social media network can see how long it took to get the issue answered, and if a business can’t answer a social media question quickly and efficiently- how do you think that looks for their actual customer service department?
Using Hyatt’s Twitter concierge service (again) as an outline here’s a great example of how Twitter troubleshooting should work:
As you can see from the image above Sandy was not happy with her accommodations. Someone staying in a room close by kept her up all night with a loud party that was not shut down by hotel staff and security. Hyatt Concierge responded minutes later with another great response that included all the required points of interest. First they asked Sandy to follow their Twitter, this is a great example of how social media platforms should be used. It’s not exactly a game, but those with the most followers win- and in this case Hyatt is reeling in Sandy to add another follower and if they can resolve her issue hopefully more followers in her social network.
Hyatt also then asked Sandy to “DM” or private message her reservation information so they could work on getting her problem fixed. “DM” is a term used across the Twitter platform and is an acronym as are most social media terms. This part of the message shows that the Hyatt Twitter team keeps up with important social media terms by using them in their messages and also shows they care enough to look over Sandy’s reservation info.
Then of course there is the self explanatory “thank you” which basically is a cookie cutter response to say “thank you for your business, come again”.
The responses following the two above can be seen in the image below:
The conversation above will improve the overall image for Hyatt hotels as Sandy and the public community sees them. Let’s break it down and see why.
Obviously in the collective time between this conversation and the last the Hyatt concierge Twitter team contacted the hotel associated with Sandy’s reservation and worked out the kinks with her visit. In Sandy’s case her entire visit was ruined by her neighbors so Hyatt comped her one night stay. Then of course Sandy responded to the Hyatt concierge team and thanked them for their support.
Hyatt responded by apologizing for Sandy’s issue in the first place and showing genuine concern and gratitude that her issue had been fixed. They also promoted their business by asking Sandy to use their social profile in the future.
The entire conversation is a great example of how a social media team should function when using Twitter as a customer service platform.
Facebook As A Customer Service Platform
Facebook would generally be used just like Twitter, in that the responses between customer and business should be very similar. The major difference between Twitter and Facebook however is that users have a little more room to elaborate on issues and converse.
In a Twitter message users only have 140 total characters to list an issue and conversely respond. Facebook is quite a bit more lenient and would offer in some cases users the option to write an entire book if so desired (exaggeration).
Because of this difference we’re going to list some examples of a customer service response through the Facebook social media platform.
Friendly Responses Using Facebook
Don’t be afraid to get personal while using social media, on a Facebook profile especially. Also keep in mind that a thread for a Facebook conversation can be read in it’s entirety so theres no need to repeat conversation or promote your company in every post. This means you can get right to the nitty gritty as Facebook friends and profile viewers can see the entire conversation history and remain up to speed with what’s happening (they can do this in Twitter as well but it’s not quite as simple).
Here’s a great example of how the Mango airlines social media team interacted with a customer using Facebook:
There isn’t necessarily anything business related in the conversation above, but that’s ok! As you can see the question and response is purely personal, yet at the same time quite amusing; no doubt Mango’s Facebook friends and customers will think so as well.
This is a new form of advertising and self promotion that is only possible via social media platforms and it’s called being personable and friendly. The reason we say it’s only available via social media because on a social media platform it’s evident to all who can view the conversation.
In a normal customer service environment businesses are personable and friendly with customers everyday but sometimes such a reputation is never apparent or visible to the public eye. In the case of social media such a reputation is available for everyone to see!
In real life customers and potential clientele don’t see the management or customer service team going out of their way to be friendly, but in the world of social media they see it everyday.
If these possibilities don’t provide great advertising and self promotion than we don’t know what does!
Troubleshooting Responses Using Facebook; Closing Comments
Theres really no need to provide an example for using Facebook as a customer service troubleshooting platform, the same basic rules apply for Facebook as they do for Twitter albeit users can respond in a more creative [and lengthy] way.
Just remember that responding personally (as seen in the examples above) while still maintaining a positive attitude is the way to go! Obviously handle professional matters with a professional response.
Don’t worry about discerning between professional and personal responses the dividing line is rather obvious.
The number one tip to remember, no matter what, is to respond quickly and efficiently; how you go about doing that is your business (hire a marketing team or do it yourself) just make sure it gets done!
Welcome to the social media network and good luck!
Blogger Briley Kenney
Briley Kenney is a young technology journalist who enjoys all things electronic and gadget related. Currently Briley writes for a plethora of professional websites including Productwiki, Uberoid, The Tech Labs, WPMods and of course TravelWires. You can find more personal information on Briley's professional portfolio site here.
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