Social Customer Care

We launched a new product and there’s been some challenges, so it’s no surprise we’re seeing comments about it on our social media posts (often ones that are unrelated to the product). Usually I have pretty good luck asking them to take the conversation to DM so I can get their email and other private contact info so I can have our customer success team reach out. But recently, people just want to keep complaining in public and try to give me that information on comments.One hypothesis I have is that they don’t know what a DM is, so I’ve changed to saying direct message. But wondering if maybe that’s too confusing. Anyone have experience and thoughts on this? 

For those of you who have launched an employee advocacy program, can you share some of the successes and struggles you had in getting team members on board? We’d love to start one but resources (platform costs and staffing) are concerns.

I’d love a feature where we can see all of the posts we’re tagged/mentioned in across all platforms under one tab so we don’t have to go to the individual channels anymore!

Hi Social Care Champions! I see so many great tips here, and I want to add something about Case Management. We offer social care as a service at B Squared Media (8 years and running with this service!). I CANNOT EXPRESS how much of a GAME CHANGER Case Management is for all things social care. WOW! Our clients are SO impressed.Escalations are much more seamless to handle … automatic case creation is **chef’s kiss** … TAGGING IS LIFE! I’ll stop gushing now. But seriously, if you’re doing any sort of customer care/customer service/social selling - YOU NEED THIS. 💚

🪿 At Goosechase, we’re always looking for the best way to drive traffic to our blog and other resources from our social channels. This has evolved over time, from the link in bio to the automated DM - think “comment LESSON, and we’ll DM you the free lesson plan!”💭 What tools do you use to automate your Instagram DMs?  🤖 Stan, Manychat, or is there a feature in Sprout that can provide the same service? Or do you connect your customers to your content in a totally different way? Did I already miss the auto-DM train? 🚂  🙏 Thanks for your help!

Anyone else out there responsible for moderating your performance marketing on Facebook or Instagram (i.e. not your organic posts, reels etc, but your paid content)? What is your strategy to moderating comments and responding to potential shoppers with genuine inquiries? Do you see improved performance based on how you treat your ad’s comment section? I would love to connect further. 

Hi all! I manage an instagram account for a large public university’s study abroad office. While our instagram account does well in terms of collecting likes on posts, our comment section is full of crickets. Can anyone chip in on tactics they use to grow a healthly comment section? One that’s engaging to students, encouraging further discussion, while keeping it drama-free 😅 I know there will always be clean-up to do for inflammatory comments, but I’m wondering how you transform quiet lurkers to converation-makers, without inviting too many trolls! I’d like to create a supportive community of students who can chat together on our posts. Very appreciative of any ideas you can share!

Hi all! We’re in desperate need of some advice/help. At the end of December, we were notified our Facebook Ad Account was suddenly disabled after ‘unusual activity was discovered’. I’ve had an active ticket open on this with Meta for weeks with no updates/help beyond an occasional ‘we’ve escalated this to a specialized team’ whenever I ask for updates. We managed to get on a call with a Meta rep who told us when he spoke with the Support team, they said we needed to supply ‘further information’ to them but provided no specifics on what information was needed - then he ghosted us too. And this is the hamster wheel we’ve been on the past few weeks; nothing really gets us anywhere! So, we’re coming to the community hoping someone has faced a similar experience and can help us. One question we have is: What information does Meta require to get a disabled account back? We’ve sent invoices/proof of payment, driver’s licenses – but Meta keeps telling us they need “information” to re

Is anyone willing to share account strategy criteria or resources you have used when advising organizations, with multiple social media accounts, on the same social channel?  My counsel has always been that for each account to exist, there needs to be a differentiated audience, as well as enough people hours devoted to quality content creation, community management and customer support. I would like to have some additional information to share with stakeholders when these conversations arise. Thank you! 

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? 

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