The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers

USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE—YES OR NO?

Should your company use social media for customer service? Here are some questions to consider to help you make that decision:

• Are your customers currently using social media to interact? Before you even consider using social media for customer service, be sure that your customers are frequenting those channels, and understand exactly which tools they are using with each other and perhaps with other companies and brands.
• Do they want to interact with your company there? Usually, a company presence will be welcome if customers are already interacting via social media.
• Are people looking for customer service assistance there? Listen to find out whether customers are trying to contact you over social media channels.
• How well are your other customer service channels performing? If your customer service via the phone and e-mail is poor, starting up customer service via social media won't fix that issue. In fact, expanding your presence into social media could make your current service problems more publicly obvious!

Whether or not your organization decides to add a formal social media customer service team, you still need to be aware that customers might be discussing your company's products and services online. Therefore, as stated in Chapter 1, at a minimum make sure you are always listening to customers wherever they're talking so you can respond to them and point them in the right direction for assistance, if needed. Remember, ...