Social media are 4 to 8 times more effective than call centres
Company relationships with customers are moving to social media, according to research conducted by Salesforce. Social media are becoming the favourite channel for communicating with customers in the B2B segment as well. Why? Because they deliver higher effectiveness and efficiency than telephone service.
Among companies that use social media to interact with customers, as many as 66% value them more than call centres. Social media make it possible to reach a huge number of potential and current customers in real time and in a way that is attractive to the audience. According to specialists dealing with customer communication, social media allow 4 to 8 times more interactions to be handled compared to what a call centre can offer. That is why a well-defined social media strategy can bring companies tangible financial results. For example, as many as 87% of Pinterest users bought a product thanks to brand activities on that platform.
Why do social media beat call centres?
Social media not only have the power to engage participants in real time, but also constitute a huge database that can be used to personalise communication - in marketing, sales and after-sales service processes. User profiles contain data such as names, age, location and preferences. In turn, analysing comments, unlike market research or focus groups, gives a much clearer picture of consumer trends and preferences.
Currently, the social platforms most often used by marketing are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest. More and more users can also be found on smaller-reach platforms such as Kik, WhatsApp or Periscope.
What does the research conducted by Salesforce say?
• 66% of time spent on the Internet is linked to activity on social networking sites.
• 66% of brands that use social media for customer service prefer them to call centres.
• Customer service employees working via social media handle 4 to 8 times more cases at the same time than employees employed in telephone service.
• Facebook is visited by more than 2 billion users per month, 1.66 billion of whom use a smartphone to do so.
• Facebook is the most frequently used social networking site among all age groups.
• 54% of users surveyed by Twitter confirmed that they took action towards a brand after it was mentioned in tweets (e.g. they visited the brand's website, searched for products or retweeted content).
• 75% of Instagram users take brand-related action after seeing an advertising post (they visit websites, sign up for a newsletter, consider or make purchases).
• 94% of marketing teams in B2B companies use the services offered by LinkedIn to distribute their own content.
• 87% of Pinterest users have made a purchase at least once thanks to information obtained on the site.
6 steps to creating a social media customer service strategy
Step 1: Define the assumptions for your strategy
6 steps to a customer service strategy
First, do your reconnaissance and answer the following questions:
• Which platforms will best support the company's goals?
• What messages should target audiences receive?
• What content can you provide to educate, entertain and engage them?
• Do you want to use specific applications or technologies to manage customer experiences?
• What metrics will you use to measure the effectiveness of your activities?
• Who exactly will be responsible for generating posts on profiles, who for interactions, and who will be dedicated to handling specific types of cases?
Step 2: Listen to what users of the sites are talking about
Twitter publishes an average of half a billion tweets a day, while on Facebook more than half a billion comments are posted, 293 thousand statuses are updated, and 136 thousand photos are uploaded every minute. To break through this flood of content and hear what is being said about your brand and your industry, you must define keywords (hashtags) that will allow you to filter the content appearing on the site. Remember that keywords also include nicknames, abbreviations or misspelled words. Closely monitor competitors' activities (brand and product names, buzz around competing campaigns and promotions), especially those with more experience in social media activities.
Step 3: Build an internal network of subject-matter experts
Managing communication is a process in which, as in other processes, reducing the time devoted to it is important. To this end, try to create an internal community of experts who serve as a base of knowledge and competences. Such a knowledge base, supplemented with easily accessible digital resources, will enable customer service employees to share information, advice and ideas faster. It is a good idea for the internal network to have its own coordinator.
Step 4: Develop an engagement playbook
The goal of managing relationships in social media is to build engagement, so it is worth developing a guide that includes information on:
• how to join a conversation,
• which categories of inquiries or issues can be answered privately and which publicly,
Will social media replace call centres in customer service?
Will social media replace call centres in customer service?
• what recommendations should be given in frequently occurring situations / questions,
• how priorities should be assigned to individual events or pieces of information, and how users should be directed to further actions, e.g. to self-service channels, sending an email or having a customer call in?
Step 5: Train teams in their assigned roles and responsibilities
It is in your interest that all employees involved in communication with the outside world have the appropriate competences and knowledge about how interactions in social media may unfold. Everyone should know their role and place. Thanks to this, you will minimise the risk of events that expose your image, trigger a crisis situation or simply result in omissions which, as is well known, lead to lost business opportunities.
Step 6: Develop appropriate metrics to measure the effectiveness of activities
The metrics should refer to quality in the area of customer service. In this field, the following will therefore be important:
• employees' response time to customer activity in social media,
• the number of incoming new cases and cases in progress, which will help determine team workload and allow work to be optimised,
• the time to close cases generated in social media. This will make it possible to develop solutions that improve service processes,
• customer satisfaction or the Net Promoter Score (NPS customer loyalty assessment tool). Measuring satisfaction by opening up to creative customer criticism can be used in several ways. Such a dialogue can positively influence customer experiences. Thanks to it, you will gain knowledge about their expectations. At the same time, you can gather interesting ideas and inspiration that will help grow your business.
Social media also for B2B companies
Social media for B2B companies
Salesforce emphasises that social media are a good space for building relationships with business customers. The guide "The Complete Guide to Social Media for B2B Marketers" contains tips on creating effective B2B strategies, taking into account the specific nature of each social networking site.
• Facebook - Facebook's algorithms for content distribution are based on more than 100 thousand factors responsible for distributing it. The only way to "win" with them is to generate content that is interesting and valuable to audiences. Tools such as Facebook Insights, Facebook Audience Insights or Salesforce Social Studio will also help build reach, as they allow you, for example, to determine the best time to publish posts. B2B companies can generate interesting multimedia content showing products, solutions, the team or the company from the inside.
• Twitter is a good option for presenting yourself as an industry expert. The site can be used to comment on current industry events, post links to blogs, company life events or activities it supports, publish infographics that stand out on the Twitter timeline and other information showing the company as a leader in the industry.
• Instagram - builds customer engagement through image - reality is created here by images and short videos accompanied by a brief comment. On Instagram you can share, for example, a behind-the-scenes look at the company, promote yourself through interesting facts, humour, or telling customer stories. Ideas can be multiplied. It is important to engage and appreciate customers and fans who post photos or videos related to the brand and, with their permission, transfer them to your own website, creating so-called user generated content (UGC).
• LinkedIn is a site engaging businesses and professionals, so it is an interesting space for both B2B marketing and sales or recruitment specialists. Almost exclusively business content is published on the site. Posts should add value (tips, advice), and can inform about new products or refer to events organised by the company.
• Pinterest is visited monthly by 150 million people, and users look here for ideas and inspiration. You can use this site to reach a very specific audience group by creating boards that inspire, set challenges and motivate. If a company uses Pinterest, it must make sure its website has Pinterest-friendly posts and photos and add a "pin it" button to the relevant content.
• Snapchat is currently used mainly by young people (under 25). If this is your target group, you have to be there. The "My Story" feature has become important for Snapchat's development, allowing photos or short videos to be added. It can be used to publish interesting stories related to the brand. B2B marketing teams that care about relationships with younger-generation customers should publish coverage of events they organise or take part in. Geofilters made available by Snapchat allow communication to be optimised.
It is worth remembering that the social media space is very dynamic. A professional approach to this channel requires constant monitoring of trends and new features made available by individual sites. It is also worth tracking user habits and preferences. Reviewing industry publications such as Social Media Examiner, Mashable, Social Media Today, TechCrunch, Digiday, and in the UK for example Ofcom or IAB UK reports, can help with this.
KPIs in B2B slightly different from B2C
Key metrics in B2B
B2B marketing teams, as in B2C, should carefully listen to what the community says about the company and the brand. For this purpose, you can use commonly available search functions on the sites themselves and on Google. There are also special tools for identifying sources of conversation, such as Sprout Social, Hootsuite and TweetDeck.
It is always worth remembering that social media require a quick response. 42% of social media users expect a response within an hour. Speed of response takes on particular significance in crisis situations, when emotions on the customer side can take over from reason. That is why it is worth developing procedures for handling crisis situations. The effects of activities targeted at business customers should also be measured appropriately. In the case of B2B, the key metrics are somewhat different from those in B2C. These are mainly:
• engagement - the number of actions taken by someone who visits or sees the company profile. These can be "like" markers, shares or comments. This metric can also include actions related to liking the profile or visiting the website,
• reach - a metric showing the number of people who saw the published content and spread it through social networking sites. On Facebook and Instagram, so-called organic reach (generated without purchasing advertising tools) is determined by complex algorithms. Your posts will be visible to potentially interested users, but for the most part this will be the community already gathered around the profile. Social media platforms want to earn money, so they successively limit organic reach. What does this mean? If you want to reach a truly large group, you should use the advertising tools available on the sites. They are very flexible and allow you to create truly effective advertising campaigns.
• number of profile fans - due to the limiting of organic reach, building a sufficiently large community is crucial for the person managing the profile. It is important that the fans are people genuinely interested in your company and products, not random individuals!
• redirects to the website - this is definitely one of the most useful conversion metrics, because it shows the number of people who visited the website thanks to activities undertaken on the social networking site.
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