Advice & Best Practices

We have set up some VIP lists based on follower counts and some accompanying auto-rules (e.g. auto-tag VIP, auto-assign case to our partnership person, auto-complete), curious if there is a way to export a VIP list so we could have a list of people we have added to this list? Also would be nice to be able to auto-add people to a VIP list based on follower count though from what I have been told this is not a possibility yet due to API limitations.

Hi there! I just got a new laptop (Dell) and it’s having issues with Adobe Premiere Rush - it crashes as soon as try to start a new project and add files. Of course, this is a major drawback since video content is the new favorite format!Has anyone else encountered this crash issue, and have any solutions?Otherwise, I’d love to collect alternative video editing software here in one list!

Who are your go-to influencers or favorite content series across industries? Looking for some inspiration—recommendations appreciated! Bonus points for thought leaders!

Greetings and Happy New Year, Arboretum! My team and I are planning to set up the customer feedback survey in Sprout. We are planning a smaller pilot phase to start. Before we begin, I want to gather some benchmarks against which we can measure our own survey results, which will allow us to set goals and expectations on CSAT scores that are specific to social media customer care.For context, we are intending to ask these questions:How satisfied are you with the help you received from me today?   Was your question or issue resolved? Please tell us more about your experience.For those teams out there providing customer care through social, what industry are you in, and what are your average CSAT scores? 

Hi all! My team and I have been seeing more Instagram story ads that center around a poll, then move you through a form fill. Have any of you used these? If so I’d love to know what were you promoting and get a rough idea for engagement and form fill rates. Thanks!

My company recently went live on Instagram with one of our influential collaborators to boost end of season sales. Unfortunately for the duration of the live it would not show that she was live with us so we completely missed her audience.  She is not on private and has no settings on to prevent her from showing she’s live with someone else. Does anyone know why this may have happened?  

Responding with empathy and clarity goes a long way, even if you may not necessarily agree with the customer. It’s important to acknowledge their experience and show that you're genuinely listening to their concern. Even when faced with complaints or negative feedback, turning the situation into a positive experience can help build loyaltyFor example, I once dealt with a customer who hadn’t received their payment for an influencer partnership. Although we hadn’t found any previous messages from them, they claimed to have reached out multiple times and posted negative comments about the company on Twitter. When I saw their public complaints, I took a moment to empathize with their frustration instead of responding with a generic reply. (Note: I think response templates are incredibly helpful, but sometimes a more thoughtful response is necessary.) I acknowledged their concern, apologized for the inconvenience, and assured them we were actively working

One way to help ensure you know what to do in most situations, ensure consistent response, and reduce many stresses and headaches is to create a comprehensive social media playbook. A playbook can include, for example, best practices, response templates, and escalation procedures, as well as specific guidance for specific clients or campaigns. An ounce of prevention can really add up to a pound of cure!

One thing we’ve found super helpful is setting up tags for common types of responses while monitoring the inbox. These can be broad, like “Negative - Low” or “Post Response,” or more specific, like tagging different product types our client offers.It’s been a total lifesaver! When a client asks for all comments about a specific topic, we can quickly sort by tag, export the data, and send it over—super easy.If you’re looking for ways to stay organized and save time, this is definitely something to think about for the new year!

While authenticity and personalizing in social media is important, so is the personalization in how to relate with customers. Use the contact person’s name, be quick with replies, know their history and engage in genuine and meaningful conversations beyond just transactional conversations. This makes a difference in customer relationships.

I am a social team of one so it’s sometimes hard to respond to every comment or message in a timely manner but a couple of things that have helped me are the automations you can set up within Meta for messages and the saved reply feature in Sprout. The Meta automations are a great feature for giving immediate responses to followers and providing them with a way to find their answer or contact us. The saved reply feature in Sprout also saves me a lot of time when responding to common questions. Does anyone else have any favorite tools or features they use for customer care?

Customer care is such an interesting aspect of this job! For me, one of the biggest challenges is that I own the socials for a variety of brands, with many different product managers. Because of this, it can be tough to chase down the relevant information in a timely manner! Throughout my time in the role, I’ve learned a TON about each product and portfolio so that I’m able to answer as many questions as possible myself. My top tip would be to record the questions you’ve received and the answers you’ve given so that when you’re asked a duplicate question, you have the answer ready to go. This way, you can also create response templates for your most commonly asked questions!

Working in recruitment marketing for a large company can make it hard to keep track of every little detail of every department. Creating a FAQ/department guide has been super helpful to quickly and accurately answer comments and DMs! Having a list of who to reach out to about specific topics is also helpful- you’re always going to get niche questions that have never come up before and can only be answered by 1 person! Even though we have the guide, we still make sure to personalize responses to the individual and not copy/paste every answer. It helps show that you actually care about the comment and aren’t just a robot.

I work at a university and we’ve begun getting kind of spammy comments across a number of our affiliated LinkedIn pages from people naming a supposed alum who they are accusing of fraudulent behavior. I’ve done a number of searches both internally and externally to try to connect this person to the person of the same name that graduated from our school AND to the companies they’re namedropping as being frauds and I cannot definitely do so. I can’t decide if we should delete these comments that have nothing to do with anything or leave them be with no comment. I don’t feel like I can comment because I can’t confirm who or what they’re talking about. I’d love to hear what others might do in this situation because on the one hand we want these commenters to feel comfortable engaging with us but we also don’t want their possible misinformation to affect our other customers.

Check out this post I recently engaged with… there was no problem to solve or customer service ticket to close—just a moment to engage, match tone, and acknowledge someone’s creativity.These small moments help to build goodwill. They’re the difference between a brand that feels robotic and one that feels human. So when there is a hiccup in the customer journey, this foundation gives a brand grace; you’ve already shown that your brand is present, listening, and capable of meaningful interaction.Never underestimate the power of simply being there.https://www.linkedin.com/posts/george-chartier_hear-ye-hear-ye-hast-thou-heard-the-glad-activity-7269444135441383424-zeAA?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

I used to do social media in higher education, until the college I worked at became the epicenter of political controversy. Hoo boy did I learn about a particular kind of customer care.The tl;dr: think backwards when in the middle of controversy.Accusations, scandal, conspiracies - all things outside our control as Social Media Managers, but, of course, we see all the comments and have to take the heat to some degree. A lot of companies turn off comments on posts gathering negative comments or hide/delete posts. Thing is, that can often make things worse. For me, I didn’t have “customers,” I had college students, parents, and community members who were concerned about a sudden publicized leadership change that would affect the college’s standard of education. Turning off comments doesn’t help any of them, doesn’t fix the fact that a physical space (the college) was no longer home to a community, and the digital space our team had spent time cultivating was the o

I think the biggest thing about customer care is discerning between when someone wants a solution and when someone wants to rant.  If someone is looking to rant, empathizing and moving off platform is the best way to go. If the want a solution  giving a nod to the type of solution you will provide (if possible) before moving to the DMs let’s others see the level of service you provide.  Either way, “showing your work” lets other users see how you operate and sets the expectation for what kind of service you provide. 

In response to today’s challenge, my biggest tip for navigating the comment section is to make sure you’re practicing self-care, whatever that looks like for you, and taking care of your team. At a previous role, the company I worked for surprised their customer base in a BIG way, that gave people a lot of big feelings they brought straight to social media. My team had to resort to shift work to handle the onslaught, and were spending full shifts being berated by people. We all know that takes a lot out of you, no matter how long you’ve worked in social media. We made sure to have a supportive team chat running, sent each other treats, and more, but the number one thing I would recommend anyone working in community management remember is to put your own oxygen mask on first.

Ensure any response/engagement with customers when addressing issues aligns with your brand style/tone but also is delivered with humility and authenticity. I think admitting fault, acknowledging we don’t know the answers, etc. is relatable and welcome when engaging with customers.

I think companies are overthinking how we approach social care. I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, when a customer cares enough to come to your social pages and complain they just want to be heard. The screenshots below show an example of a customer who seems to continually have mobile app problems.  Since I started this role 4 months ago, this is his second time commenting on an unrelated facebook post and bringing mobile app UI problems to our attention. The first time I was pretty new and my manager told me to hold off on replying to customer complaints. She didn’t want me to say the wrong thing and risk any negative brand consequences. I told him we’d look into the problem, but didn’t really engage and didn’t follow up with him to see whether we fixed his problem--I was new, don’t hold it against me! But this time he commented, I figured “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I meet this annoyed customer from a place of empathy and understanding?” So I affirmed his feeling

I think companies are overthinking how we approach social care. I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, when a customer cares enough to come to your social pages and complain they just want to be heard. The screenshots below show an example of a customer who seems to continually have mobile app problems.  Since I started this role 4 months ago, this is his second time commenting on an unrelated facebook post and bringing mobile app UI problems to our attention. The first time I was pretty new and my manager told me to hold off on replying to customer complaints. She didn’t want me to say the wrong thing and risk any negative brand consequences. I told him we’d look into the problem, but didn’t really engage and didn’t follow up with him to see whether we fixed his problem--I was new, don’t hold it against me! But this time he commented, I figured “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I meet this annoyed customer from a place of empathy and understanding?” So I affirmed his feeling

I’m curious where y’all fall on the comment deletion spectrum. I’ve seen everyone from influencers to brands opt for all sorts of things, including:Deleting anything remotely negative Responding and trying to take the conversation private or offline Responding with snark, sass, or more dirt-throwing Ignoring completelyWe tend to go for option #2 unless there’s really awful language or off-color accusations; then, I’ll delete and report/ban/block.

I am certainly glad I keep moderation on in the Facebook groups I moderate. Most of the time the posts are fine but there is often that one zinger that is just terrible. Got one this morning  that would have just devastated some of our parent volunteers!

If you manage a social account for a retail brand with a brick and mortar store (or maybe for a restaurant, bar, or taproom), this is a trick I started using this year!Sometimes people will contact us via DM outside of office hours with a question that could use a faster reply that we’re able to respond with (I’m a social team of one and manage 4 different accounts). I started adding not only these are the hours we’ll reply ASAP during, but also you can call the store if you can’t wait for a reply & the stores’ phone numbers.And during holidays, I change the away messages to reflect that we are closed & will reply ASAP when we reopen the next business day.I’m not sure if anyone actually ends up calling the stores when they get the message, but it at least gives them an immediate reply & an avenue to get a faster answer!What automatic reply tricks have you learned?

Having a consistent brand voice that carries across all aspects of your social media is so important-including how you respond to comments and messages.I work on many different brands (primarily in the home service sector) and would love to develop a more individual voice for each brand. Right now, we are pretty much the same safe, professional voice across each brand, with some slight variances to allow for differences in the target market.So I’m curious how you all go about developing a voice, and for those of you who are allowed to have a little more fun with that voice (i.e., injecting some humor, snark, or sass), how were you able to get upper management on board with this?