They say- Be there where your customers are! And ever since the advent of social media, platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. are the best places where the customers love to spend a lot of their time. As a result, the businesses that realize the importance of customer satisfaction, take to social media to extend support to all their customers. But do all of these businesses succeed in providing an exceptional social customer support to their customers? The answer is a big ‘No’!

24/7 social customer support, social media monitoring, website visitor tracking, instant replies to brand mentions, speedy query resolution- there’s a lot that business today do to impress their customers. However, there still remain some leaky points that screw up all these efforts of a business. There’s a bucket full of reasons responsible for that. Read on to know what they are.

Responding only to positive brand mentions:

The worst case scenario is that a business is present on social platforms but does not monitor brand mentions. However, not all the businesses are that ignorant. Though most of them make use of highly efficacious social media monitoring tools, not all of them use these tools correctly. Businesses often direct all their responses to positive mentions alone while neglecting the negative ones. Such a practice can actually mar a business’s reputation. So, it’s advisable to take care of every mention, no matter positive or negative.

Responding using automated messages:

Customer support agents have to strive hard to protect the business from the wrath of infuriated social media users. Just like they cannot ignore the negative opinions, they just cannot slap automated responses on the customers’ faces. In order to safeguard a brand’s reputation, it’s very important to treat even the most disgruntled customers in a humble, human, and personal way. A lot of patience and a great training in empathy is what it takes to do so.

Resolving an issue privately:

What’s the point resolving an issue privately when it was actually introduced to you publicly? Even if the issue was put forward privately, make sure that you resolve it in public domain. Wondering what makes us say that? Well, there are three reasons you ought to do so:

i) Resolving any issue publically lends a credibility to all your claims of providing an exceptional social customer support.

ii) Such an act builds a good reputation for your business and creates an impact that you value your customers.

ii) Third and the most important reason is that for every complaint that comes up, there are a number of hidden similar complaints. So, resolving one automatically provides a resolution for all the others.

Not being active when your customers are:

This is yet another social customer support mistake that businesses tend to make. Yes, it is necessary to respond to all of the customer queries, opinions, and brand mentions. There’s something else that’s equally important. It’s the time when the responses should be provided. As a matter of fact, social customer support requires a different mindset and strategy to be effective. So, it’s imperative that you identify your customers’ needs and adjust the time you respond to them accordingly.

Responding using unacceptable errors:

Just like ignoring negative comments is not a good thing to do, responding with messages full of typographical or other such errors is also not acceptable. So, it’s imperative that the social customer support agents spend adequate time to proofread their responses prior to publishing them. After all, you wouldn’t want an already infuriated customer to lash out publically just because your support agent tagged a wrong person!

If you too are making any such mistakes, watch out! You may unknowingly be driving your potential customers away.