Social Media as a Customer Support Channel: Best Practices

So far, most enterprises have only addressed the opportunities for using social media in marketing. They have adapted their marketing strategies to benefit from the new revenue and branding opportunities provided by social media. But in order to create a cohesive customer experience strategy and connect data across departments, enterprises need to include social media response in their customer service function. Agents should be empowered to handle interactions in social media, and to escalate to other channels where necessary.

In order to improve customer satisfaction, enterprises should adapt their contact center solutions to respond to customers in the medium of their choice, which is increasingly becoming social media. Enterprises need to invest in social customer service tools that enable interaction categorization, routing, and response from within the agent desktop. Social interactions should be handled and managed in a similar way to traditional customer service channels. Agents should have guidelines on response, as well as the ability to transfer to another channel where personal or complex information is
required. Enterprises should prioritize interaction resolution and develop best practices for handling complaints.

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