September 11, 2020 
The bulk of customers are social media users. This is evidenced by the fact that the number of daily active users of social media around the world crossed 1.5 billion.
The recent analysis predicts that the number of daily social media users is expected to grow to more than 3 billion in the next two years.
Businesses are channelling funds into social media marketing and customer service, in a bid to expand consumer interaction and engagement.
Businesses are eager to strategise and optimise their huge followership on social media, to boost sales, increase brand loyalty and ensure better engagement with customers.
Innovations and new ideas are being put forward daily to ensure a successful social media customer service strategy for businesses.
One of them is the chatbot, which is a highly effective and affordable way to improve customer service on social media.
It will not only help you reduce your operational cost but will also ensure customer satisfaction and automate answers to repetitive questions.
We recommend you use Zebrabuzz for a highly effective and costumer-friendly messenger chatbots.
The power of a highly effective customer service strategy lies in its ability to create brand recognition and connect businesses to customers on a personal level.
This is essential for businesses because social media is now a viable tool for customers to interact with businesses today. So, it will be ruinous for businesses to ignore customers on social media.
So how do you start leveraging the power of social media to connect to customers and reap the benefits? Today, we will be exploring the seven social media customer service best practices.
Social Media customer Service Best Practices
Always respond to your customers
This simple rule is highly effective for customer engagement. You want to give your customers a sense of belonging. Responsiveness is a must for quality customer service on social media.
A lot of businesses lack this aspect. They are merely lackadaisical and don’t meet up with the fast-paced nature of communication on social media.
Always responding to the enquiries and reviews is one way to build brand loyalty.
Timeliness also matters when responding to customers. A slow and sluggish response will mean losing your customers to your competitors.
The more consistent you swiftly respond to your customers, the more loyal your customers will become.
A responsive customer service approach on social media is a great way of showing your customers that you value them and prioritise their needs. The reverse is the case when you rarely respond to them.
Today’s customers no longer tolerate delayed response; some businesses may complain about the huge stream of messages they receive in a day. This is why successful businesses use chatbots in their social media customer service.
With Zebrabuzz, you can build an AI-powered chatbot can improve your customer satisfaction by always being available round-the-clock to respond to your customers promptly.
You can programme the chatbot to answer frequently asked questions, freeing up time for your human customer rep to tackle complex issues.
Through the process of automation, chatbots can handle hundreds of questions at a go; your customers will no longer complain of delays or become frustrated.
Follow-ups are necessary
How do you create a sustainable relationship with your customers?
Through follow-ups. Follow-ups are one of the most overlooked social media strategies, but they are crucial. It is one way to show your customers that you care about them.
Follow-ups can also impact positively on the customer experience by reducing the likelihood of a negative review.
You can also use follow up to garner the much-needed feedback, which could help improve your business.
Follow-ups also take you a step ahead of your competition by doing a better job at customer service than them.
Your customers may feel your business is more friendly, hospitable and prioritise their needs. This is key to customer retention.
You can use a chatbot to do a follow up after it has provided an answer to a customer’s enquiry or complaint. We advise you have a mind map where you would include a follow-up message after some seconds lag.
Read: What Happens If The Chatbot Does Not Know How To Respond?
A Timely Response is a Necessity
Despite the numerous perks and benefits of social media to businesses, it has its challenges.
One of them is the fact that customers demand real-time response or instant replies to their enquiries and challenges.
Businesses that are not able to meet up with quick response time are negatively impacted.
Recent surveys have shown that the majority of customers on social media want replies from businesses within three to four hours. The quicker, the better.
Slow response time or delayed response time can severely damage a business reputation on social media.
Zebrabuzz chatbots are smart, simple and effective tools that can be used to deliver an instant reply to your customers, improving customer engagement and interaction.
It can improve your customer service quick response time and help keep your customers satisfied.
Read: Why do Companies Use Chatbots?
Use your customer’s name while interacting with him/her
There is nothing that sounds pleasant to someone as his/her name. When attending to your customers on social media, do not forget to use their names.
You can start with a friendly greeting and the customer’s name. It will reflect the caring nature and competency of your business.
It can also allow you to connect more with your customers on a personal level, which is key to building brand loyalty.
So how do you streamline the task of conversing with your customer’s name?
Zebrabuzz chatbots can be integrated seamlessly into your social media channels, where they can easily interact with your customers on a first-name basis.
For instance, Zebrabuzz can be used to create a messenger bot that can easily chat up your customer with a polite greeting and his/her name.
Establish a brand voice and tone
For you to create an enduring customer-friendly brand, your business has to have a brand voice, which is the personality and emotion that it uses to engage and reach out to customers.
This means every choice of words or languages you use must reflect your brand voice. It helps your business become distinct, unique and entrenched in the hearts of customers.
Consistency is the key to creating a lasting brand voice, which will lead to recognition and patronage.
While it may seem extremely difficult to invoke a brand voice, Zebrabuzz chatbots are effective solutions and can help create a brand voice for your social media customer service.
You can tweak your chatbot to display human qualities and personality. First start by giving it a name, gender and communicative tone. For instance, if you want your business to be more formal in dealing with your customers, then your chatbot shouldn’t be overly comic.
That is simply incongruous. When strategizing on how to utilise your chatbot better, remember your priority is to connect with your customers.
