Community Question: Customer Care Challenges

I think the most significant challenge in providing quick and effective customer care is the lack of timely interdepartmental communication when it comes to questions asked on socials. For example, if we were to receive a message about an event happening, as the social media manager, I may not know the answer to give them off the top of my head. This could take a couple of days to get a response from our events team, resulting in a late response. A solution we have implemented that I’d recommend to other teams is to start a group chat (on Teams, Slack, or whatever your organization uses) for social media support where you can send questions and receive a response in a timely manner.

I believe the most significant challenges faced by businesses when it comes to providing effective customer care on social media is managing the speed and volume of interactions/comments/messages. Social platforms have become essential for customer support. However, it can quickly become overwhelming for businesses due to the sheer number of inquiries they receive and the expectation for quick responses from a real person as opposed to a bot. 👍

I think one of the biggest obstacles is just the lack of recognition that social media ‘counts’ as customer service/care. Engaging with customers/audience through comments and DMs doesn’t get the same respect or regard that dealing with customers through email/phone/in-person often does. 

In order to change that, there are a few things we can do. The first is to be more vocal about the importance of social media engagement as a form of customer care. Sharing articles and research about it is a good step.

Second, you can make sure that others are aware of the types of questions/concerns/comments you’re getting and at what frequency. This helps with awareness.

Finally, you can loop in the customer care teams who work in other areas so that they understand you’re part of their work. Send the questions their way, keep them looped into conversations, and share feedback.

For us, the biggest challenge is that we can’t verify someone’s identity on social media, and therefore can’t help them with their question. They need to call in and verify with the last 4 of their social in order for us to share their account-related information and provide personalized assistance. 

Having the right amount of people on you team to keep up with the requests, the inquires, orders. Also, there is less personalization when everything is done on social media. It is not like you are picking up the phone and speaking with the person and guiding them into additional options and opportunities for you to make more sales of your product or services.

Collaborating departments not, well, collaborating effectively will tank an SMM’s ability to provide quality social care. When social media is looked at as someone simply ‘playing on [insert platform here] all day” as opposed to a way to listen, engage, nurture, and market proactively, social care efforts are stunted unnecessarily. One thing brands can do is begin to look at social media as the important marketing element it is and use the insights gleaned there to inform their other marketing tactics.

What do you believe is the most significant challenge faced by businesses in providing effective customer care on social media, and how do you think they can overcome it?

I see the most significant challenge for effective customer cases on social media from a lack of dedicated support. In the various social roles I’ve had at very differing organizations, there is always some expectation for social media people to also be customer support experts, with an obvious disconnect to the true customer support lines. 

And with that, the reality is that people will always go to social media as a support outlet, whether a business is directly supporting that or not. It’s a public space to communicate with brands, and people will do what they can to be heard when they need something.

The business I support currently is a technology startup, for a coding/developer-related, enterprise software solution. Needless to say, when some of our product users come to me for help to debug their code on social media, I know that I am not the subject matter expert. I Google and I find user docs and tutorials within our own websites and YouTube channels where I can, which thankfully fills in the majority of it. However, sometimes what a user needs is not something I can support, so I need to escalate to our product and engineering folks. I am told constantly that I should tell users that they should stop going to social media for these questions and to send people to our GitHub and other places. Which, of course I do. But it comes back to what was said previously -- People are going to come to these channels, no matter what. So instead of businesses saying support shouldn’t be on social media, they need to acknowledge that it is there, and so a support resource needs to be integrated into the flow somehow. 

The most significant challenge, I believe, is lack of communication and collaboration between the social media and customer service teams therefore the social media team who responds to customer questions/inquiries/etc. may not have the effective methods to help customers but merely pass them off to another department.

Being a team of 2 across 2 venues, one of our biggest struggles is handling customer care on social media. It's crazy how popular these platforms have become for customers to get in touch with companies, whether they need help, want to express concerns, or just give feedback. The non-stop stream of interactions can be overwhelming and sometimes lead to delayed responses or even subpar customer support.

To help manage this we have integrated a link in our auto reply that directs to our website FAQ. This website is continuously updated when new questions arrive. This has helped our customers find the information the need without the delay of a response. While some cases the FAQ might not be applicable, its important to set realistic expectations to make it clear to customers what kind of support they can expect on social media, such as response times during business hours or limitations in handling complex issues on the platform.

PS.. Love that giveaway water bottle! 🤞