Social Media Customer Service Software

What is Social Media Customer Service Software?

Social media customer service is the practice of proactively listening for and responding to support issues on social channels. Social customer care has emerged as one of the most important ways in which social technology is used by companies. This has been driven by consumers who quickly discovered that the quickest route to a customer service response was not to call the company and open a support ticket, but to tweet an issue to the world. The very public nature of the grievance is almost certain to to elicit a very rapid response—certainly more rapid than more traditional channels. Some social media customer service solutions like Conversocial and Lithium Social Web specialize in this specific use case. In response, some platform vendors have started to add support functionality, including things like ticket routing, to their platforms.

How Social Media Customer Service Differs from Standard Customer Service

The goal is to make support in the form of agents and knowledge available through the most convenient channel: social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It is different from other approaches to CRM in that agents use social listening, tracking, alerts, and workflow automation features to identify and respond to all customers who have questions or problems, regardless of whether they create a support ticket or even contact the company directly.

Social media is typically not the sole channel for support; it is usually part of a multi-channel customer service strategy that may also include a call center, email support tickets, live chat, and/or a self-help portal.

Why Businesses Choose Social Media for Customer Support

Proponents of this approach say social is a promising support channel for two main reasons:

1. Most customers already spend a lot of time on social networks, and engaging in social media conversations is faster, easier, and less stressful than engaging over phone or email.

2. Customers often express their feelings around brands, products, and support experiences to their peers via social. They can post comments or questions on a brand’s profile page, tag @ or # mentions of the brand. By responding to all of these cases, support agents ensure that the maximum number of customer needs are met. Because social media is a somewhat public venue, good social support experiences create positive PR and prevent complaints from going viral.

Social Media Customer Service Software Features & Capabilities

Analytics

One of the biggest selling points of social media customer service software is its ability to provide organizations with key insights on their customers. Components of analytics for this type of software include being able to not only measure the success of social media campaigns, but gather data on customer personas, use cases, and more.

Chat Bots
Not every social media customer service solution will feature the use of AI-powered customer support, but this is an increasingly popular capability. Businesses can employ the use of customer support bots via various channels to streamline customer support and provide on-demand and live assistance.

Organization & Management

Unified inboxes are a key component to this class of software. This allows social media and customer support managers to work together to streamline their approaches to customers via social networks. These features address concerns about having to manage responses to customers via dozens of different interfaces and platforms.

Scheduling & Publishing

Social media customer service solutions typically have features which allow administrators to plan and schedule social posts across various channels or social media platforms.

Social Media Customer Service Software Comparison

To compare different social media customer service solutions, consider these factors for each product offering, and make sure they have these capabilities:

1. Allow for rapid, real-time responses from a unified platform.
2. Notifications and alerts to address spikes in requests, but also to monitor sensitive social media situations.
3. Intelligent AI, to manage personalization and minimize errors.
4. Robust suite of analytics capabilities, to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improving your brand's social media strategy.

Pricing

There are rudimentary social media marketing tools that are available for free, but may not be suitable for corporate use, and typically will not provide features that also support customer service. True social media customer service solutions typically start at around $99/mo and can range to as much as $400/mo for more advanced features and support for more social channels.