Now to be honest there are lots and lots of different social media channels such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and more.
But for this, to be honest, twitter is the most effective because of the way it works — at least in my experience and with others.
But much of them use the same basic principle. So I am just going to give you some tips.
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But like I said, there are the others, I mean you are unlikely to do customer service via snapchat. If you can, good luck to you. We are not trying to adjust any time soon in my business.
Reply Quickly
So first one, above and beyond everything else. Reply quickly. So if you can reply quickly, that is going to be impressive in itself. Let me give you an example.
On last, at time of recording this a week ago, I was told something I’d ordered would be dispatched, on using first class post, which in the UK means the next day.
A week later, it hadn’t arrived. I sent in a ticket and that company has not replied to my ticket, which is asking where my coffee is. Now it’s actually quite nice about it.
But the last time I put a ticket into them, they took 4 days to reply. And on their contacts page, it actually has the message of we are very experienced, large volumes at the moment, we are very busy, so in other words, to me it says we got loads of complaints. So bear with us.
Just respond quickly. It, I don’t care how many if you’ve got too many, too many responses; you need more people on it, okay.
People use social media because they want an instant response, they are not going to be impressed with the, ‘Sorry we are short staffed, sorry we’ve had a lot of inquiries. Sorry we’ve been busy.’ Just get on it. Just, even if you are going to say, ‘Sorry we’re a bit behind. Can I get back to you tomorrow on this?’ Yeah, you get what I mean?
The other one, if you are going to, if you are going to get more than a couple of replies on this kind of thing, it requires a bigger business.
Grab a different twitter handle. I mean say if you are Marketing for Owners, you might be @MFOteam, or @MFOservice. Something like that.
If you look at a lot of the bigger companies like Microsoft and the airlines. Quite often they will have a second one so it’s very clear. In fact the ones that do it brilliantly. Quite often even have one for each of the team that handle the inquiries on twitter.
Because that generally, I think was it Comcast, might be one of the big ones were there. That generally mean they are getting a lot of inquiries.
But of course if you answer the inquiries quickly, and if you encourage people to us it, then people will.
Use Names
Now another one, talking about different handles, use names. So when you reply to someone, first of all try and find out what their name is.
If they’ve got a weird twitter handle, it’s going to say that. So try and find out what the name is. Is the name having Jon, add the name Jon as well.
Make it look like you found out who they are. And at the end, put a little dash, your name and so that when they reply, they don’t know how many people are doing this at your end.
There is nothing more annoying that when you, when you contact customer service, again another example, this was actually this morning. I was on the phone. Phoning up a potential supplier. And she was just in the middle of cutting off, of asking me some questions, and the phone cut off.
So I waited a little while, like waited a couple of minutes, to see if she just ring me back, but she didn’t. I rang them, and the first thing someone said is what’s the name. I said I don’t know.
I, never even occurred to me their might be lots of people, and she said it could have been anyone of the hundred. Great eh?
So use names.
Track Mentions
Now the other one is you can track mentions. So if somebody mentions your name, you can set up alerts, you should be doing this anyway.
Using google alerts or twitter alerts. You can set it up when people not only mention your brand, your name, well one of your products. But also the keywords that are used in your industry.
So if you’re in the window industry or something in an area. And this is the thing you can track this by the area. You can actually do what’s called Geo filtering which means you can set a radius.
If you are a local business, you only operate within 20 miles. Then you don’t want to talk to everyone in the whole world. Perhaps. So just set a radius so it only gives alerts within a certain geographical area or a town, or a region or within a radius of 20 miles.
And then you could track. In the UK we call it the double glazing. So if you track that term double glazing, you might find someone who’s got problems and issues with their supplying. You might jump in and support them, or offer them some help or some advice.
And you might be able to get a customer as well. This is in addition to customer service. You are giving customer service before they are even a customer. How impressive would that be?
Taking it Offline
Now how about taking it offline. Now when you are dealing with someone, when you are talking with them on those issues. when you’ve got some customer service issues, remember you are talking publicly. Take it offline. Or take if off public twitter.
You can move to direct message, to DMs. You can give them a phone number and a direct number. Ask them to call you or you can ask them. Better still, in fact ignore that.
Don’t ask them to do do something. You do it. Say, ‘Can you DM me with your number and I will ring you immediately.’ Not tomorrow, not in a couple of days. Immediately. ‘Or can you email me your DM, and I will get this sorted.
Or can you email me you order number I will look into it. And with your phone number, and I will call you back.’ Something like that.
Take it off. Don’t leave it out in public.
Now if someone has given a very very public, had a go at you and been very nasty, then this is your opportunity. So publicly apologize.
Because negative feedback is going to happen alright. And this is your opportunity. This is the best, if you’ve got negative feedback, your opportunity is to spin it and have loads of people see how you turn that around and what a wonderful company you are.
Admit Your Error
So if that happens, admit your error. Apologize profusely. Never add the little but it yeah. So in we sell fire safety stuff. Almost every single complain is due to our carriers.
We cannot say that ‘However it’s down to our carriers, or it’s not our fault. Or it’s out of our hands. Or it’s fine when it left us.’ We put the carriers, we sent it. We don’t have a lot of choice in the ones we can use because of the goods we send. They don’t care. They don’t care. It’s not their problem.
So remember don’t add little digs. Don’t blame others. But spin it around, but apologize, and say, ‘As a thing, if you can DM me your order number, I will make sure that the goods are credited in full, the post that is credited and we’ll allow you to keep the goods as a goodwill gesture.’
Something like that, it’s like advertising, public advertising but better.
Remember so dive straight into negative thing. Accept. Face it, but spin it.
Go Above and Beyond
And the final one is just go above and beyond what others do. Make that extra effort. Be nice, be polite be lovely. Just go above and beyond/ before you reply look up their website, see what they do. Make a little comment to make it obvious that you’ve made an effort. Okay?
Now talked about making an effort. Well actually nothing to do with making effort.
Drive Time Podcast
This is Thursday. So it’s time for a Drive Time podcast. One of my all-time business favorite podcast is an Aussie. It’s good old Timbo Reid, or Tim Reid.
It’s called ‘Small Business Big Marketing’. Now this one is so good that they actually play it on Qantas, in Australia, on flights. It’s that good. Tim is brilliant.
He’s been doing this for years. And he is so funny. Lovely guy. So Small Business Big Marketing. Tim Read, you got to listen to that.
Talking about got to listen, tomorrow is ours Ones to Watch. And tomorrow we have the lovely pink head Taz Thornton. She is wonderful. You will enjoy it. Listen to Taz Thornton tomorrow. Let me know what you think. See you soon.
