Social Media Customer Service is the new gold standard for retail brands, but does your internal team have what it takes to get your program off the ground? This white paper discusses how to: Set up your social media strategy, Staff and train for proper handling, and the benefits of a robust social media strategy to take care of your customers where they feel most comfortable. Don't let your business be left behind, contact Global Response today. http://www.globalresponse.com/services/social-media-customer-care/

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Activating The Contact Center For
Social Media Customer Care
“Most Facebook sales don’t occur from brand posts. They result from friend posts.”
— Jon Kubo, chief product officer at 8thBridge, in an interview with eMarketer, December 2, 2011
If
that is the case, why do 96% of companies with a social media presence focus on
direct advertising and promotions? It’s because, from a brand perspective, social
media is still in its infancy. According to a recently released study by Frost &
Sullivan, most businesses only use social media for push marketing, and have yet
to put processes in place to fully serve the customer. In many cases, advertising firms serve
as the primary social agencies of record. This is not their core competency, so customer
service opportunities often fall by the wayside.
A recent survey by STELLAService tested 20 top retailers, exploring their methods for
conducting customer service on Facebook. STELLAService posted general, service-related
questions to each retailer’s Facebook wall and comments section. Of the 20 retailers tested,
“five failed to respond to a question posted on their wall within two days. Meanwhile,
seven retailers removed the question from their wall, hiding any record that a consumer
had a question.”
Solving the Social Media Customer Care Riddle
To completely serve the consumer, and ultimately drive
word of mouth and incremental business, companies must
progress their strategy past mere push marketing in the
social sphere. This guide will describe how to extend the
function of your existing customer service contact center
into the social realm, complementing the awareness
function of your agency.
Your customer service team is already set up to manage
inbound complaints and inquiries to their ultimate
resolution. With social media, the team’s function
can expand to promoting brand culture via customer
interactions, and even proactively upselling consumers
based on interest categories relevant to the brand. The
following steps walk through the basic structure of social
media customer care and how you can get your team up
The Social Media How client, agency and customer service fit together and running: (continued next page...)
Purchase Funnel: to serve the social media purchase funnel.
Your brand. Our passion. 800-537-8000 | www.globalresponse.com

2. Activating the Contact Center for Social Media Customer Care |2
What To Do
1. Set Up
a) Establish your brand tone of voice – Although this dovetails with the
marketing aspects of social media, it is of the utmost importance to maintain brand
identity when conversing on social channels. If your brand is mom-centric, then
your customer service dialogues will be very conversational – with each consumer
getting the utmost in attention, and dialog strings of five, six, or even seven
interactions with one customer. However, if your product or service is for a younger,
more cutting-edge male audience, your interactions may be brusquer, tongue-in-
cheek, and to the point. Either way, you will want to establish this early on, and
train the team on how to accomplish this in the social space.
b) Set up consumer complaint / question escalation practices – From
a brand-safety perspective, social media can be particularly tricky for brands
starting out in customer service. Social media is the perfect two-way dialogue.
This means that if a customer is not happy with you, he or she can tell all of their
friends about the negative experience, and possibly rally entire groups of people
against your brand. To avoid this, the best practice is to be open and honest with
consumers, never leading them astray, and always remembering that they are right
– to a reasonable point. You will need an internal document that outlines how to
answer bucketed complaints or questions, with clear escalation practices to get
the right answers quickly, or take negative opinions offline to a private venue. At
Global Response, our Brand Care team works together to fully ensure brand safety.
Brand Care Specialists utilize a large and continuously updated knowledge base of
best-practice answers to common questions. A perfect retail example is @zappos_
service, who routinely solves customer inquiries via social media.
c) Determine a Quality Assurance Process – One aspect that most
companies overlook is the importance of spelling and grammar in protecting and
projecting brand voice. Tweets and posts can be seen by hundreds (if not hundreds
of thousands) of people, so proofreading is one of the most important elements to
include into your process. Designating a proofreader for all outgoing posts may
seem like a large resource allocation, but it will prevent many headaches in the
future. At Global Response, each team has a dedicated proofer, whom ensures
brand voice and offers response ideas in real time.
d) Determine Point of Contact for Agency and Brand – If you are
attempting to manage the team yourself, it will quickly become apparent that
much liaising is required between social media and upper management. Having
one key-holder to manage the social team and sell success to upper management
is important in establishing social as a cultural and customer service success within
your organization. At Global Response, our project managers are your primary
point of contact, with full visibility into team performance and close communication
with upper management.
(continued next page...)
Your brand. Our passion. 800-537-8000 | www.globalresponse.com

3. Activating the Contact Center for Social Media Customer Care |3
2. Getting Started
a) Determine a Management Platform – It is important to note that all
management platforms are not built the same; choosing the one that is the right fit your
company is important. Hootsuite is a good starting point, but Spredfast may be a better
bet if you are looking for real-time customer service tracking and brand-safety tools.
Social Customer Care Workflow
Develop a process for how the internal
and external teams handle engagment
b) Determine Human Resource Scheduling – It is important to spread out
and response in the social space. team members’ time so that they can at least cover business hours. Management and
Here is an example: infrastructure must be available during all times of coverage; at Global Response,
we can staff to need, with dedicated Brand Care Specialists fully assigned to
your brand and a flexible operational environment that can be customized to
your requirements.
c) Pre-write templated responses for various inquiries – After
doing an initial audit of your brand’s share of voice and the types of inquiries
coming in, make sure to pre-write, practice, and document the best-practice
responses for your team. First, arm them with the brand voice and suggestions
for responses, then test and learn to see how those responses are received, and
how you can improve for the future. Given the nature of social media, it is
important to realize that a pure conversation will always be preferred to a script.
People want to feel valued by and engaged with a brand. If you always stick to
a script, your conversation will go stale, and customers will stop engaging with
your brand organically over time.
d) Determine outbound search and response buckets for upselling /
conquesting opportunities – One of the real benefits of social media, especially
Twitter and Pinterest, is the opportunity to proactively upsell products to like-minded
customers. This means that if you are a party supply store, you can actively search
for people on Twitter who are talking about their “birthday” or are planning their
“wedding” and engage with them in a natural manner. Often this will take the form of
congratulating them on their life event, as well as inquiring as to whether you can be of
help, or if they have heard of your party supplies.
3. Conclusion
Social media is a fairly new frontier for customer care. It must be approached from the
perspective of Brand Care. Putting in place the proper processes, staffing, and mindset will
allow you to harness social media interaction with customers to refer qualified return traffic,
build brand equity, and drive sales.
Global Response is the Brand Care Call Center with 38 years ex-
perience. We understand the importance of delivering the high-
est level of customer care across all channels, including social
media. We have the trained Brand Care Specialists, the technol-
Brand Care Call Centers
ogy, and the experience to join the online conversation on your
behalf and deliver outstanding Brand Care. Stay up to date with 800.537.8000 globalresponse.com
more Global Response posts at globalresponse.com/blog/
Your brand. Our passion. 800-537-8000 | www.globalresponse.com