Many brands have started utilizing social media to understand customer issues and complaints. Most of their audiences are active on social media channels. This gives them direct access to customer insights and requirements. Brands can also reinforce their branding efforts by bringing in customer support services through social outlets. 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are some of the most popular social media platforms. These platforms are mostly used to promote the brand and its offerings. You can also use them to resolve customer issues. One of the most popular means of doing this is responding directly to customer comments and posts. 

What is social listening?

Social media listening platform means understanding customer issues and feedback through social media. Brands track customer feedback and opinions to improve their products or services.

The customer conversations give them insights into customer behavior and buying patterns. It also helps them get a clear idea of their angst, frustration, or issues. Social listening can also be used to keep a close eye on the evolving requirements of end users.

Here are some ways of improving customer service through social listening: 

1. Recognize the most popular social platforms

Before using social listening to resolve customer queries/complaints, recognize the social platforms on which most of your customers gather.

• If you run a B2B type of business, most of your clients may be active on LinkedIn or Twitter.
• Instagram is the best place to address customer issues related to shopping brands. 

Finding the right content distribution will help you track industry-specific brands, customers, competitors, etc.

• Suppose that you sell SaaS products. In this case, most of your customers may be active on LinkedIn.

In this case, choose LinkedIn as your content distribution platform. 

Set alerts or notifications on these social media platforms so that you don’t miss out on important conversations. The alerts or notifications will also help you prioritize customer queries or complaints. Different social platforms have different ways of doing this.

For instance, you can use the communications tab to set up notifications on LinkedIn. 

Focus on popular social platforms to bring in customer engagement. It will help you build long-lasting relationships with your customers, which will ultimately boost your business. Be active on these social platforms to improve your customer response rate.

2. Use social listening tools

Tracking customer conversations via several social media platforms can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Social listening tools can help automate some of these tasks. 

Social listening tools help you keep a close eye on customer conversations. These tools use brand mentions, tags, and keywords to track these conversations. You can also create a search query to fetch customer conversations without any issues. 

Smart use of social listening tools prevents you from missing out on a single customer conversation. These tools not only save you time but also enable you to send prompt responses to customer queries and complaints.

• You can also latch on to a comprehensive customer management suite like Konnect Insights.

It helps you understand what customers are saying about your brand and products. 

Also, it helps you track customer conversations and analyze them automatically. Based on the insights obtained through this social listening platform, you can make data-driven decisions. 

Konnect Insights is one of the best platforms that allows you to manage customer experiences. You can listen to their conversations and respond to them immediately using its tools and features. It is possible to integrate this platform with several apps that can help you manage customer data. 

The wide range of tools offered on this platform helps you enhance customer relationships. You can conduct surveys and evaluate customer feedback through these tools. It also comes with crisis management capabilities. With these capabilities, you can pre-empt a crisis and take prompt action to resolve it. 

3. Listen to what customers are saying through forums and communities

Social media is not limited to social media accounts and pages. Countless forums and communities are active on social media. The audience uses these communities and forums to discuss their issues. They also use these social outlets to connect with like-minded people. You can target those communities that contain your target audiences. 

• For example, if you manufacture gaming phones and devices, you can focus on gaming communities and forums. 
• The communities like Quora and Reddit can also help you to discuss customer issues and complaints in detail.

These communities will provide you with in-depth insights into customer issues or pain points. By analyzing their pain points, you can make significant changes to your product and customer service. 

Leaving open threads on social media can leave your customers frustrated. Address customer issues through these threads. It will also help customers who are facing similar issues. It will help improve your customer service, which will in turn allow you to maintain customer loyalty. 

4. Convert frustrated users to loyal customers

Listening to customer issues and complaints is just one part of the process. Many more efforts are required to provide a satisfactory experience for your customers.

• You can start by acknowledging the customer’s issues and apologizing for them. 
• Next, you must provide more clarity to the customers by discussing with them in private. If possible you can explain to them over a phone call or meet them in person. Faster response time makes customers feel like you understand their concerns. 

Make customers feel like you care for them. Small things like sending them an apology letter or giving them extra loyalty points for being patient can help your brand go a long way. Once you have resolved the issues or complaints of the customers, you can ask them to subscribe to the newsletters. 

• Create email newsletters that focus on discussing the product features in detail. Also, keep the customers in the loop about your latest offerings through these newsletters. 
• Addressing customer complaints is not enough. You must also acknowledge positive reviews and feedback. A simple thank you can be enough on most occasions. 

Social listening tools will ensure that you respond quickly to the appreciation notes of your customers. It will make your customers think that you feel good when they appreciate your offerings. Tiny efforts like these will strengthen your customer relationships.

5. Analyze the customer service problems faced by your competitor’s customers

Social listening helps you analyze the strengths and shortcomings of your competitors. By using insightful social media tools, you can recognize the concerns that your competitors’ customers are facing. Using this, you can revamp your customer service strategies. 

Suppose that some of your competitor’s customers are not happy with the limited customer service options they offer. You can capitalize on this shortcoming and try to lure them in by offering more options. 

• For instance, you can offer customer support services through chat, email, telephone, etc. Keep your customers satisfied by providing them with more options to connect with your support executives.

It will not only give you a competitive edge but also help you expand your customer reach. 

Tips to improve customer service using social listening

These are some additional tips that can help you improve your customer service:

1. Be proactive

Be proactive while addressing customer concerns and complaints via social media.

• By being proactive, you can notify a customer even before they have encountered a problem. 

Suppose that you sell software solutions and that your software is scheduled for maintenance activity due to a recent update. Now, it is better to inform all your customers in advance than respond to their complaints afterward. It will create a good impression on your customers. 

2. Merge content marketing apps with social listening tools

The social listening tools help you track customer conversations in real-time.

• By merging content marketing apps with social listening tools, you can manage customer interactions.

Handling the customers in real-time can also help you avert a crisis. Choose social listening tools that are backed by powerful algorithms. You should be able to enter search queries, keywords, and brand names to monitor conversations. These tools should also be integrated with content management apps to offer seamless customer service.

3. Discover brand influencers

Discovering the influencers who have the maximum impact on your customers can also improve your customer service. You can track how these influencers deal with and manage end users. Adopt some of their strategies to make your customer service more impactful. 

• Influencers usually have knowledge of re-targeting groups based on their conversations. By using their insights, you can construct formidable marketing campaigns. Some of these insights can also be used to retain customers. 

Train your customer support executives to cross-sell your offerings. Suppose that a customer who uses your software is suffering an issue due to poor security measures. Now, if your support executives are fully trained in cross-selling, they can pitch your antivirus software smartly to the users. 

4. Conduct a market research

Thorough market research will help you find the best platforms to address customer issues. Once you shortlist the popular social platforms, start offering customer service through your social media accounts and pages. 

5. Find what to track and how to track

Just listening to everything that your customers are saying is not feasible. You must also decide what to track and how to track it. A clear plan can help you monitor the things that can affect your brand’s image and customer service. 

While using social listening tools, you can focus on these things:

• Brand mentions
• Industry buzzwords
• Customer complaints and feedback 
• Customer appreciation received through reviews and feedback 
• Hashtags relevant to your business 
• Hashtags related to your competitors
• Mention your industry influencers 
• Tracking how the influencers engage with your target audience

6. Collaborate with influencers

You can also collaborate with the influencers to keep a close eye on the customer’s issues and concerns. By working with them, you can create formidable customer acquisition and retention strategies. Learn how to pitch relevant products or services by analyzing customer service. 

Conclusion

Social listening is a much quicker and more cost-effective solution than traditional marketing tools. Use social listening tools to improve customer service and retain customers. You can also integrate these social listening tools for online crisis management.

Identify the right channels for handling customer queries and complaints. After that, you can focus on picking the right social listening platform. Konnect Insights can help you manage the customer experience. Its myriad of features enables you to evaluate customer conversations. Finally, you can improve your existing customer service portals to integrate social listening activities seamlessly!

Featured image by Thorsten Frenzel from Pixabay