Learn More About Social Customer Service Software
What is Social Customer Service Software?
Social customer service software enables businesses to provide customer service through social media. These solutions help companies leverage social media for different purposes, such as addressing complaints, answering questions, providing guidance, and issuing refunds via social channels. Social customer service software notifies the customer service team of customer issues raised across social media platforms so that they can be resolved efficiently.
The potential for high customer interaction and customer engagement between brands and customers on social media platforms brings social customer service software into the picture. It provides a two-way communication platform between brands and customers. While brands can reach out to customers for product promotions, announcements, new deals, and so on, customers get a channel for their queries to be answered.
What are the Common Features of Social Customer Service Software?
Live chat: Some social customer service solutions provide users with a live chat function. This allows live agents to connect with customers through a messaging board and open up a conversation with a customer that is looking for support or is experiencing an issue with the product.
Ticketing system: Social customer service software provides users with the ability of routing, assigning, and scheduling support tickets to support agents. This is a key function since it allows users to distribute work evenly and make sure that social media management is always getting covered.
Stored messages: Social customer service software being cloud-based support software, often provides users with the ability to use canned responses and stored messages. These messages can automatically respond to certain customer complaints that contain specific keywords or phrases. This provides more automation in customer support and less time sifting through each complaint.
Post filtering: Social customer service software picks up on keywords that can automatically identify which customer support team should be responding to a certain comment. This filters social media posts and helps teams focus on the content that is most relevant to them.
Social listening: Social listening helps identify which customer comments require the most immediate attention. This helps teams focus on the most important content first and filter out the requests that can be dealt with on a rolling basis.
Reporting: Reporting tools allow users to create data-driven reports based on their interactions with customers on social media. This allows businesses to gather insights into how users are interacting with the brand or product. This data can then be presented to identify which areas must be improved.
Help desk: Help desk solution provides a knowledge base or other support channel for employees to work together and find solutions for ongoing customer problems. This aids in employee-customer communication by providing canned answers and more support when dealing with complex customer issues.
IT service desk: Most social customer service solutions also provide help with technical issues that arise with using certain products. If certain customers are looking for technical expertise, then businesses can promptly respond via social customer service software and route it to a customer support team. This helps cover the technical issues rather than general customer complaints.
Some additional features of social customer service software are:
Besides the main functionality mentioned above there are other key support features offered by most social media customer service software solutions:
- Real-time customer service responses consolidated into one unified platform
- Notifications and alerts to address spikes in requests and to monitor sensitive or contentious social media situations
What are the Benefits of Social Customer Service Software?
Since more and more customers are choosing to interact with brands on social networks, social customer service can be a tool that is equally as important as standard customer service. Excellent customer service can create a positive brand image and deescalate customer complaints. Some of the biggest benefits of social customer service software include:
Customer loyalty: Social customer service software can help businesses retain customers and build customer loyalty by responding to customer inquiries across social channels. By providing real-time customer support and seamlessly integrating social media into crosschannel customer service support strategy, businesses can positively impact sales and gain customer loyalty.
Customer satisfaction: Queries being resolved efficiently and also on a real-time (subjectively) basis helps improve service experience, increases customer satisfaction, and improves customer experience.
Customer relationship: Social media customer service software also helps improve relationships with customers, since it flags conversations, both good and bad, prioritizing them for the business to respond to appropriately. The software can identify frequently asked questions or recurring problems, which assists in product development and improves customer support.
Marketing intelligence: Understanding how consumers act on social media channels is a great way to gather market intelligence. If customers are complaining about an ongoing issue or if they are praising a certain product feature, this customer data can be a great starting point on how to build business marketing and development strategy.
Prevent customer calls: Customer service representatives can handle a great deal more when they are responding to customer comments online rather than fielding countless customer phone calls. This saves plenty of time and potentially money if businesses decide to eliminate call centers altogether.
Who Uses Social Customer Service Software?
Social customer service software is leveraged extensively across all businesses. However, some teams within companies tend to use the software more often. Those teams include:
Customer support: Social customer service is traditionally used as a means to manage customer complaints or questions. With this in mind, it should make sense that customer service and customer support teams are the ones that can benefit the most from this software. Social customer service software can automatically alert customer support representatives when their brand is mentioned online, which helps speed up response times.
Marketing teams: Marketing teams can use social customer service software as a means of gathering valuable marketing material. If a brand or business is mentioned positively on social media, the marketing team can use this as a way to advertise how the brand is performing well. By the same token, if a company is quick to respond to any customer complaints, then its marketing team can use this as leverage to promote active customer service representatives. Lots of customer data can be pulled from actively monitoring and responding to customer complaints on social media.
Software Related to Social Customer Service Software
CRM software: CRM systems are typically the hub for customer information, and when customer service teams have access to customer information, they will be more effective in serving the customers with who they interact. A product that integrates with the CRM also potentially enables sales teams to play a role in customer service. If a customer is complaining over a social channel, the social customer service tool can route this complaint to the CRM. Then, the salesperson associated with the account can reach out in an effort to rectify the situation.
Online reputation management software: At its core, social customer service is about maintaining a positive brand image. Online reputation management software allows companies to monitor users’ online reviews and promote positive experiences through online review platforms. This goes together with social customer service since both types of software are geared toward helping companies manage their online brand presence.
Chatbots software: Chatbots are automated, live online helpers based on artificial intelligence (AI), which helps provide answers to customers’ frequently asked questions. They are also a standard offering of social media customer service software. Chatbots offer instant online support and can transfer queries to contact center agents if needed.
Social media analytics software: Social media analytics software provides functionality for gathering and reporting on data related to social media accounts. This is a great tool to complement social customer service software, as it provides more data about customer tendencies on social media. Understanding the most frequent customer complaints can help users craft more canned answers or see which parts of their product need the most improvement.
Challenges with Social Customer Service Software
Incorrect filtering: The main technological limitation of social customer service software is its inability to distinguish between customer conversations and real customer complaints. This leads to the software picking up plenty of social media posts that aren’t relevant to a customer service team.
Public conversation: A major issue with responding to customer complaints on social media is that it is done in a public forum. Customer service representatives must understand the repercussions of negatively engaging in a public discussion with customers, especially if it gets combative. This can potentially look bad for companies.
How to Buy Social Customer Service Software?
When choosing the social media customer service software that is right for a business, companies need to consider their specific needs to find the right fit. First, buyers should evaluate the need for social customer service software and determine what functionality will be most useful for the business.
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Social Customer Service Software
Some initial questions which should be asked include:
- How can social customer service software help the business?
- What is the volume of current requests or queries generated through the channel?
- Will this uplift present customer care service?
- How customizable is it as per business needs?
- How is the offering priced?
Compare Social Customer Service Software Products
Create a long list
Evaluating vendors should start with a long list, which will help to determine whether or not a given solution is a good fit. With a long list, businesses can create a broad list of tools that align with their goals. So that there is a level playing field, it is important to ask the same set of questions to each seller.
Create a short list
Next, a whittling down should take place. Through pointed questions, demos, and trials, buyers can go from a long list to a short one. Although this will differ for each business and use case, three to five products are typically a good number. With this list in hand, businesses can produce a matrix to compare the features and pricing of the various solutions.
Conduct demos
To ensure the comparison is thoroughgoing, the user should demo each solution on the short list with the same use case and datasets. This will allow the business to evaluate like for like and see how each vendor stacks up against the competition.
Selection of Social Customer Service Software
Choose a selection team
Before getting started, it's crucial to create a winning team that will work together throughout the entire process, from identifying pain points to implementation. The software selection team should consist of members of the organization who have the right interest, skills, and time to participate in this process. A good starting point is to aim for three to five people who fill roles such as the main decision maker, project manager, process owner, system owner, or staffing subject matter expert, as well as a technical lead, IT administrator, or security administrator. In smaller companies, the vendor selection team may be smaller, with fewer participants multitasking and taking on more responsibilities.
Negotiation
Just because something is written on a company’s pricing page, does not mean it is fixed (although some companies will not budge). It is imperative to open up a conversation regarding pricing and licensing. For example, the vendor may be willing to give a discount for multi-year contracts or for recommending the product to others.
Final decision
After this stage, and before going all in, it is recommended to roll out a test run or pilot program to test adoption with a small sample size of users. If the tool is well used and well received, the buyer can be confident that the selection was correct. If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
What Does Social Customer Service Software Cost?
The cost for social media customer service software ranges from:
- A free, very limited, entry-level offering to £12 per agent per month (USD $17 per agent per month)
- £70 per agent per month (USD $99 per agent per month) for a basic offering
- Up to £360 per agent per month (USD $499 per agent per month) for software with more advanced features and capabilities
Social Customer Service Software Trends
Software trends, in many cases, are interrelated. The social media realm is evolving each day and is a hotbed of innovation and technology integration. The following trends go together with the current state of social media strategy and marketing as a whole.
Artificial intelligence (AI): AI is empowering businesses to optimize digital marketing efforts and target the right people at the right time. As a technology trend, AI is making waves in countless industries, from manufacturing to office administration. With regards to social media customer service software, AI helps provide an insight into customers’ activities across social platforms online and deliver digital customer service solutions to meet these needs in real time. Artificial intelligence software helps businesses understand their audience and save time and money.
Analytics: Social media customer service software can help by providing sophisticated analytics and insights into what customers are saying about a company or brand online. This helps businesses understand their customers, demographics, and the main pain points, or primary areas of satisfaction, and then address them appropriately.
Social Customer Service Software Trends
Software trends, in many cases, are interrelated. The social media realm is evolving each day and is a hotbed of innovation and technology integration. The following trends go together with the current state of social media strategy and marketing as a whole.
Artificial intelligence (AI): AI is empowering businesses to optimize digital marketing efforts and target the right people at the right time. As a technology trend, AI is making waves in countless industries, from manufacturing to office administration. With regards to social media customer service software, AI helps provide an insight into customers’ activities across social platforms online and deliver digital customer service solutions to meet these needs in real time. Artificial intelligence software helps businesses understand their audience and save time and money.
Analytics: Social media customer service software can help by providing sophisticated analytics and insights into what customers are saying about a company or brand online. This helps businesses understand their customers, demographics, and the main pain points, or primary areas of satisfaction, and then address them appropriately.