Social Media Outsourcing
Over the years, customer service has evolved and become more efficient for customers to get the support they need and for businesses to manage enquiries. Effective customer support is also very important as it can reflect badly on the business if the customer service is poor and results in a bad review – which is crucial in a world where the majority of business takes place online. One of the ways that customer service has evolved is with social media. As people regularly use social media apps such as Facebook and Twitter to message their friends, it makes sense that they would message a business directly too.
Well, this is exactly what has happened as many businesses have an online presence that includes social media now, too. Being able to communicate quickly and directly over social media platforms is of great benefit to both parties. But, it brings the need for increased management of these platforms. What may have been a customer service team just handling emails and calls, is now one that has to monitor social media enquiries.
If this is a service you have and are struggling to cope with the demand or if it’s a service you would like but don’t have the scope to manage it, don’t worry. At alldayPA, we can offer awesome social media message management that ensures your customers receive the service they expect and you have the extra time you need for other important tasks. To learn more about the service or inquire about how it can work for you, why not call us for a chat? You can speak to a member of our friendly team on 0333 015 5935 or email us using the contact form on our website.
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Social media outsourcing comes as part of our outsourced call centre package.
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What Is outsourced social media management?
Okay, so what exactly is social media message management? Surely replying to a message from a customer is simple, right? Well, yes, but you’ve got to consider the sheer volume of messages you could have to deal with, all the while ensuring every customer’s issues are recorded and resolved within a reasonable time. When you look at it from that perspective, it can sound like a colossal task, but it’s not something you have to handle alone. By outsourcing this task to a capable company, such as us, you can make sure that your business’s customer service needs continue to run smoothly and your customers are kept happy.
As social media is a great way of immediately getting in touch with people and a way of seeing what’s happening in their lives currently, and the same applies to business pages.
It’s important that these pages are active and responsive to customers in order to make a good impression and ensure that they are in touch with your customer base. When a customer sends a message to a business’s Facebook page, for example, that page will be given a rating of responsiveness, which shows to a customer how engaged you are with your audience. To keep this response time short, you will need to reply as quickly as possible, but we appreciate this isn’t always easy.
By introducing a social media management team, we’ll receive your messages and be able to handle requests instead of them going to you. This means that our dedicated team will be able to respond instantly, handle the request and manage it amongst the potentially hundreds of others that may come through. When you’re busy at work or have a long list of other tasks to do, replying to social media messages is likely the last thing on your list, but don’t fear for your quality of customer service, we’ve got you covered.
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How Exactly Do You Provide Amazing Customer Support Via Social Media?
The first step in providing top-notch customer support via social media is responding quickly. This shows that your brand is active and keen to engage with its followers. When customers message your company through social media, this is because they want an instant response, hence messaging you directly. You can take your presence on social media to another level and monitor certain keywords or hashtags that relate to your business, allowing you to interact with them when they are posted.
Having effective practices in place for managing message enquiries is equally as important. This could be as simple as a step-by-step process that starts with answering the customer’s message, noting the issue and resolving it for the customer. If there isn’t an action plan in place, this could lead to the issue raised not being resolved, the interaction being drawn out and unproductive or, in the worst case, missed entirely. Having a process in place is one of the ways we effectively manage social media messages.
When responding to open posts of customers asking for help, such as if you’ve been tagged in a tweet, it’s important to determine the intent of the tweet. The majority of the time you will get genuine customers asking for help or support, but there’s also a chance you will get online trolls too. These trolls will often post negative comments about your business and purposely try to bait your company into a response. If you get involved with these negative posts, this could reflect badly on your brand – it’s best to stay away.
Another way you can stay at the top of your customer service game is by giving the customer updates on how you’re working to resolve their issue. Leaving them days without a response could lead to them getting work up or anxious about the issue. To prevent this, you can simply send them a message with an update of how their enquiry is progressing. This will show them that your company cares about their request and that a solution to their issue is coming quickly. Unfortunately not everyone is patient, and this is especially the case when there is an issue that needs resolving. By calming the customer’s nerves, you’re able to keep them happy and prevent them from feeling like they need to make another call or raise another issue.
The Evolution Of Social Media As A Customer Service Tool
Since its introduction, social media has continually grown and probably surpassed bars higher than anyone could have imagined. Its integration into our daily lives has been massive and often accounts for a lot of the screen time we spend on our phones. What started out as a simple way of posting updates about your day and adding people you know as ‘friends’ has evolved into an extremely popular way of not only posting updates about your life but keeping in touch with the world and the people around you. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all offer ways of directly messaging people, and it’s a great way of communicating!
Recognising this as an effective way of communicating and a way of adapting to the times, businesses began using social media to engage with the range of age groups that use the various platforms available. Having a business social media page to post important updates about products, services, promotions and even opening times became the norm. Also, having these pages active on social media gave customers a great way of interacting with the business and being able to ask questions and get answers almost instantly. From this, social media messaging for customers to receive support from companies became mainstream.
This has led us to the modern-day, where customers won’t think twice about quickly DM-ing a business to ask a question or raise an issue. In response to this, companies have created dedicated customer support teams to deal specifically with social media accounts. This often includes not only marketing and posting updates, but handling customer requests too.
Due to the increasing popularity of this way of communicating with businesses, more and more social media users have turned to this outlet, rather than picking up the phone, in search of customer support. As expected, this has led to a huge increase in the number of messages from customers, which, in turn, requires extra staff to handle them.
Recognising this and businesses’ needs to utilise social media as a customer service tool, we’ve created services to ensure that companies can use these platforms effectively. This means that your business is able to provide effective, dedicated and productive support to every customer that messages you through social media. Our team will manage these messages and ensure that every customer gets the support they need. What’s more, with the ability to tailor scripts to your brand, which you’ll get as part of our Outsourced Call Centre package, every interaction will positively reflect your brand.
It’s likely that the use of social media as a customer service tool will continue to grow, even beyond its uses today. Already companies are using social media more and more to not only interact with their customers but to increase their online presence and utilise what is essentially a free form of marketing. The more that businesses post on social media, the more users they are likely to reach and the more leads they will be able to generate, simply as a result of being active. If this is part of your business plan, you’ll need to incorporate a plan to handle the increased demand for super-quick customer service using social media, which is something we can help with, as part of our Outsourced Call Centre package.
Here’s What Else Our Package Includes…
We’d never leave you underserviced, and one of our ways of keeping this promise is outlining exactly what you get in your package so you can make sure you’re choosing the right one. With our outsourced call centre package, you’re able to benefit from tailor-built scripts so that every interaction we have with your customers is on-brand for you. This can be implemented as part of our email management too, as we can handle all email communication so you don’t have to. We’ll ensure every message is sent in your company’s TOV and that all messages are recorded.
Also, as part of this package, we can offer Live Chat management services, which allows us to speak directly to your customers through a chatbot on your website. As this chatbot is readily available for anyone to use, it’s important that you have a member of staff on hand to answer it, should a customer have questions. This is something we can take care of for you and ensure that every enquiry by a customer leads to a ticket being created so the task can be tracked.
Other packages we offer include the Virtual Receptionist package, Telephone Answering and Starter package, each of which offers a different level of scale. The varying level of features allows you to choose a package that suits your business and ensures that not only do you get exactly what you need, but also that you’re not paying for extra features you won’t use. For example, our starter package includes only the name, phone number and message taken, as well as online email support, which could be ideal for a small business with a relatively small customer base. However, for a larger company that regularly receives customer enquiries, the Telephone Answering or Virtual Receptionist packages would be more suitable, as these include a more comprehensive service that will cover crucial aspects of customer support.
We’ve created these packages to be suitable for different sizes of business, which means if you have one package already, such as the Starter package, for example, but need additional support on a range of other tasks, we can help. You will be able to upgrade to a more suitable package that allows you to benefit from a wider range of services and ensure that your customers don’t suffer as a result of business growth. Choosing a comprehensive package is a great way of putting your customers first and ensuring that they get the support they need regardless of your staff’s availability.
The Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Customer Enquiries
There are multiple benefits to outsourcing customer enquiries that can be useful for both you and your customers. On the business side of things, you’re able to direct your resources into other tasks and spend less time answering messages popping through all day. This means you’ll have more time to focus on other tasks and also, the response that the customers get will likely be more helpful as it is being given by a member of our team who has the time to deal with their inquiry. Similarly, the message will be properly recorded, a ticket will be created and we’ll ensure the issue gets resolved. Trying to reply to multiple messages whilst carrying out other tasks can lead to what feels like a rushed service for the customer, through no fault of your own.
If social media messaging isn’t previously an outlet for customers that you offered, it’s possible that it could take extra training, more time and, potentially, the recruitment of more staff to begin offering it. This can put a strain on your resources and lead to your budget being stretched as you hire new recruits. However, to begin offering this service and hit the ground running, we can help, with a dedicated team that will be completely in charge of managing social media messages from customers. This can prove a much more cost and time-effective way of handling this service.
On the customer side of things, they will be able to benefit from having a dedicated support team member handle their enquiry. This will reduce the time they have to wait before receiving a response and, when they do, it will be a friendly and helpful message to ensure their issue is resolved. Our team is specially trained to handle these messages effectively, so we can make sure that every customer has a positive interaction with us and, as a result, your business. If customers aren’t able to reach you easily or they believe that your customer service is poor, it could deter them from buying from you again or even becoming your customer in the first place. With our social media message management, you can improve not only your customer service but the reputation of your business too.
You can outsource other customer enquiries to us too, including calls and emails. By doing this, and choosing a company that has a passion for providing great customer service, you’re able to greatly improve your customer support. It will also allow you to see customer enquiries when you can and ensure that you don’t get swamped by huge influxes of messages and calls. Using customer relationship management software, social media accounts and other platforms to interact with customers can take time and training, which isn’t always something you can provide. You may be in charge of handling customer enquiries yourself but aren’t sure how to use any of the equipment and tools you’ll need to provide an effective service. Fortunately, we do, and we can use them to their potential to ensure your customer service is second to none.
The Benefits Of Using alldayPA
Outsourcing work to us could give your business a new lease of life, as it allows you to spend more time on other important tasks or explore new ways of communication which you may previously not have had the scope for. Working with us is easy, straightforward, and our team is always on hand to help if you have any questions. We outline our key services in the packages we offer, so you know exactly what you’re getting. If you’d like to learn more about what we offer, you can explore the packages on our website, or if you’d like to speak to a member of our friendly team, you can call us on 0333 015 5935.
Choosing to work with us should be an exciting experience and, if you’re not already, you should know that we’re industry experts teeming with expertise just waiting to be put to use for your business. We’ve mastered our craft and a lot of software and applications with that too, which means we’re well-equipped to begin handling all of your customer service needs. You can collaborate with us over plans too, as we allow for fully tailored scripts when you choose our Outsourced Call Centre package, ensuring every interaction has your brand all over it.
We believe that round-the-clock support is essential for any business, especially if you have international customers. Busy lives, different time zones and a host of other things can lead to customers contacting you at unpredictable times, which means it’s up to you to be ready. When you work with us, we have a dedicated team on hand every hour of the day, every day of the year, to support your customers. Not only is this great for them, but it reflects well on your business too and shows that you can make time for them, anytime!
If you’re blown away by the amount of support and control over customer communication we can provide, we don’t blame you. But, don’t worry about us completely taking over, we understand that it’s important for your business to still have a hand in client relations. That’s why we offer great options, such as our Virtual Office App, for you to easily gain insight into how customer communication is getting along. The app will detail data such as the number of interactions with customers we’ve had and which times of the day are the most popular for customers to get in touch. Roll all of these benefits into one, plus the fact that you get to work with a company that loves seeing businesses thrive, and you’ve got an amazing deal. We understand the way that businesses work and how important it is to keep customers happy, in order to progress. Due to this understanding, we’re able to provide services we believe are second to none.
Get In Touch
At alldayPA, we have a range of packages and services that apply to a wide range of industries, such as property, legal and tradespeople, just to name a few. So, why not pick up the phone and speak to a member of our team today to find out which package is best for you and how it can benefit your business. You can call us directly on 0333 015 5935 or email us using the contact form on our website, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. We understand you may not know which package would be best integrated with your business, but don’t worry, we can help you every step of the way.
Every time we speak to a new business, we view it as a new journey and opportunity to work with an amazing bunch of people. We always ensure that we take that energy and channel it into our services to ensure that we handle your valued customers with the care and respect that you would expect. We look forward to hearing from you!