How Businesses Are Using Social Media for Customer Service
Thursday 23rd January 2025
by Beth Perrin
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In the past, customer service was reserved for traditional channels such as phone calls, emails and face-to-face interactions in physical stores. In fact, 18th century entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood is believed to be one of the first merchants to offer customer service in the form of a money-back guarantee, promising buyers that they could receive a full refund if they were dissatisfied with their purchase from his range of pottery products.
However, with the rise of digital platforms like social media and their growing prevalence in our lives, modern businesses have found new and faster ways to provide support to consumers. In fact, nowadays, 79% of customers expect to interact with customer service representatives via social media, and 88% of them say they are less likely to buy from a brand that leaves complaints on social media unanswered.
Let’s take a closer look at what social media customer service encompasses and explore how businesses are using it to boost customer satisfaction and improve their online reputations.
What is Social Media Customer Service?
As the name suggests, social media customer service refers to the process of providing customer support via social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. It involves responding to public comments and private messages (DMs), and assisting customers with both existing and potential purchases - whether they want to buy items directly from your social media storefronts (such as your TikTok Shop or Instagram Shop) or your website. For service-based businesses, you’ll need to handle enquiries relating to bookings, subscriptions or sign-ups instead of products.
Social media customer service can either be carried out by an internal team within your business, or outsourced to an agency like 3sixfive if you’re struggling to keep up with your volume of incoming requests.
Crisis Management & Prevention
From product failures to disgruntled ex-employees, a social media crisis can come in many different forms. When negative situations arise on platforms Facebook, X and Instagram, they can rapidly gain traction, leading to serious consequences for your brand. Offering social media customer service and carefully monitoring your inboxes around the clock means you can detect these crises in their early stages, and prevent them from spiralling into something much worse.
This ties in closely with Social Listening, another important social media task that involves tracking relevant keywords, hashtags and phrases to ensure you don’t miss any untagged mentions of your brand, and responding accordingly.
Personalisation is Essential
Another key reason why businesses are using social media for customer service is that it allows them to provide highly personalised support. 71% of consumers are frustrated by impersonal shopping experiences and 84% agree that they’re more likely to buy from brands that treat them like a person, not a number - so having the opportunity to tailor your responses to their individual needs means you can really turn occasional shoppers into loyal customers.
Some ways to add a personalised touch to your service are:
• Use each customer’s name when greeting them
• Type out a fresh response every time instead of repeating yourself
• Sign off each message with your own name or initials to humanise your brand
• Respond to the specific concerns raised in the customer’s message instead of copying and pasting a generic, templated answer
In addition, you should always check your previous messaging history with a customer before replying, especially when dealing with an ongoing conversation that another member of your team may have handled prior to you. This will prevent the customer from having to repeat information they’ve already shared, which can be frustrating and time-consuming.
Public vs Private
Some customer requests can be handled publicly, while others will need to be taken into a private setting. Thankfully, social media offers both! Simple questions, positive feedback and general enquiries can be dealt with via public comments, while private messages are much more suitable when dealing with sensitive personal information, complex issues that require detailed explanations, complaints, or situations where a customer might be frustrated and therefore a more discreet discussion is needed.
Responding to public comments is a great way to raise brand awareness, as other users who visit your page or find your content will be able to see the replies you’ve sent to your customers. This increases your brand’s visibility on each social platform and indicates to newcomers that your business is helpful and attentive, rather than them arriving on your page and seeing lots of unresponded comments.
Pair Customer Service with Community Management
When you’re not resolving specific requests and complaints, don’t forget to engage in general conversations with your customers too. Interacting with your audience in this way is known as Community Management, a perfect accompaniment to customer service and a great way to increase brand love.
Chatting with your fans and followers will humanise your business and show its fun side, ultimately strengthening customer relationships and making your brand seem more approachable. It can also lead to an increase in referrals via word of mouth, with 76% of consumers agreeing that if they have a good social media experience with a brand, they’re likely to recommend it to their peers.
Tips for Improving Your Social Media Customer Service
• Use the right platforms
There’s not much point in setting up a dedicated customer service account on X if you’re only receiving a couple of messages per month on this platform, while on the other hand, you shouldn’t be neglecting Facebook if this is where the majority of your enquiries are coming through. Keep an eye on any new and emerging platforms too, as these may grow to become popular customer service channels within your industry.
• Respond quickly
Most consumers (69%) expect brands to respond within 24 hours and 16% want a response within minutes, so you need to make sure you’re replying quickly enough to your incoming messages and comments. Failing to do so may result in cart abandonment, customer churn and deflection to competitors.
• Don’t use chatbots
Here at 3sixfive, we’re all about the human approach, which is why we always recommend that brands steer clear of chatbots. Sending automated messages and leaving your support strategy in the hands of an AI can lead to inaccurate responses, a lack of personalisation and wrong answers being given, due to its inability to fully understand human language.
• Reward loyal customers
While customer acquisition should of course be a priority for your business, retaining and rewarding your existing ones is also vital. Take advantage of Facebook’s Top Fans feature to identify and praise your brand’s biggest social media supporters, perhaps by adding them into an exclusive private group to show them that you genuinely care about their dedication. Consider creating a loyalty program which can include exciting bonuses such as discounts, free gifts and early access to new product collections.
• Respond to Facebook reviews
While Review Management is typically associated with dedicated feedback platforms like Google and Trustpilot, don’t forget that reviews can be left on Facebook too - and your business should be responding to these. If they’re positive, show your gratitude by thanking customers for their kind words, and gently encourage them to buy from you again in the future. If they’re negative, make sure to apologise first and foremost, before taking steps to put things right.
Summary
Social media customer service is here to stay, so if your business is taking too long to respond to customer requests on platforms like Facebook and Instagram (or failing to respond at all!), you could be missing out on a wide range of opportunities to complete sales and provide post-purchase support. With a solid strategy in place, you’ll be able to turn casual shoppers into loyal fans of your brand, and give them the information and reassurance they need to build trust in your product or service.
Need a helping hand? Contact us today to discover what our team of customer service experts can do for your business.
