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Author: Franz Malten Buemann

  • 5 Tips for a Great Social Media Customer Service Strategy

    A good call center leader understands the importance of customer service. So what if you have an incredible product or service? That means nothing if your customers are displeased with their experience with your brand.  

    If social media part is not part of your contact center’s customer service vision, you’re missing out on valuable business opportunities, like: 

    promoting sales; 
    improving customer satisfaction; and 
    enhancing your business processes. 

    Creating a Customer Service Strategy that Drives Business Growth

    If you’re not leveraging your social media channels to engage and support your customers, now is the time to start. Keep reading to discover the essential role this tool can play in your contact center’s success.

    Why every business needs a customer service strategy. 

    Customer service strategies are a key contributor to your business’ long-term revenue. A well thought-out customer experience will guide your users towards a purchase faster than good marketing. In fact, PwC reports 73% of customers cite customer experience as a top influence when making purchasing decisions.  

    How to Develop a Customer Service Strategy for Your Contact Center

    How social media fits in with customer service. 

    Social media is one of the top communication tools for support  — in fact, 75% of customers use social media to engage with their favorite companies.

    What’s more, 47% of customers expect companies to use social media as well. If you’re not responding to them, fair warning: they won’t be satisfied with a one-sided conversation for long. 

    FACT:
    75% of customers use social media to communicate with businesses.

    When it comes to building a customer service strategy, social media actually offers many benefits to call centers.

    Cost savings.

    In the US, the average cost per call is $6 USD, while the average cost per social media interaction is only $1 USD. This makes sense, as paying an agent to solve an issue one-on-one with a customer is more costly than hitting “reply” on a social media post.

    However, it’s important to remember that these free platforms have their limitations  — while they’re great for addressing simple queries, complex issues will need to be escalated to the voice channel. With that said, social media is a great way to take pressure off your phone lines and reduce the cost of addressing basic customer questions.

    3 Tips to Reduce Cost Per Contact in the Call Center

    Customer loyalty.

    Call centers can use social media to engage with their audience and improve customer loyalty. These online platforms let you to have real time conversations with your users and humanizes their interactions with your brand.

    By responding to their queries promptly in a friendly and professional manner, your customers will maintain a much more positive perception of your brand. Of course, this can backfire if your team doesn’t respond in a timely manner — much like leaving them on hold. If you are able to keep your customers engaged on your social channels, you stand a much better chance of retaining them in the long run.

    Be wary of negative customer feedback.

    Despite all the benefits, social media can be a double-edged sword for businesses. Any customer service professional knows that given the opportunity, customers will take every chance to complain about a poor experience.

    The public nature of social media brings the risk of negative word of mouth. On top of that, it’s possible for your brand to go viral for all the wrong reasons. This risk alone should speak volumes to call centers: customer experience and satisfactions must always be a top priority!  

    How to Create a Great Customer Perception Survey

    5 Tips For a Great Social Media Customer Service Strategy 

    1. Use an omni-channel approach.  

    Phone communication and instant messaging aren’t enough for customers these days. 66% of customers prefer to shop at businesses that use multiple channels to provide customer service. 

    A true omni-channel contact center incorporates the many different channels your customers use to contact your business and creates a seamless customer experience, regardless of any escalations or transfers that may occur during the interaction. Social media is one of those channels — others may include chat support, email, phone channel, etc.

    Make sure you provide the same quality of customer support across all channels. Adopting tools like Scheduled Call-Backs and Visual IVR can help you ease transitions during a customer interaction, bridging them to the voice channel if needed without risking call abandonment.

    2. Seek and reward customer feedback.

    Customer satisfaction surveys and customer satisfaction scores (CSat) are integral to the success and performance of your contact center. Customer feedback offers valuable insight into the state of your service, and can help your team identify successes and areas for improvement.

    Contact centers should collect this information across all channels, and social media is no exception. Expand your efforts by sending customer surveys through direct messages, or sharing polls where customers can vote for a particular answer. This lets your customers know they are valued and that their opinions matter.  

    TIP:
    Psssst. Voice Call-Backs are another great way to show customers that you care. Don’t leave them on hold during high call volume periods!

    If you’re not getting the level of engagement you need, consider promoting a reward program to encourage customer feedback. For example, you could offer a small discount on their next purchase over $50.

     

    Report on social media activities.

    What kind of metrics do you include in your call center reporting? Most call centers choose to focus on KPIs like abandon rate, average speed to answer, and first call resolution. 

    But are you reporting on social media activity? Your customer service strategy should measure two areas: engagement data (views, clicks, comments, etc.) and customer behavior (what kind of messages they’re posting, positive vs negative feedback, etc.). Using both quantitative and qualitative data will give you a more holistic view of your social media efforts and how your audience is responding to your efforts.

    Compare with your competitors.

    There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. If you’re stuck on your strategy, start looking at your most successful competitors’ social media channels, and start taking notes. Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you explore their online presence:  

    What kind of posts do their customers share with them?
    What type of tone or language do their use when communicating with their customers?
    How frequently do they post?
    What do they do well, and what can you do differently? 

    Business coach Elise Mongomery puts it nicely: “…By looking to other industries, we step out of old patterns and set new standards.” 

    Stay on top of customer activity.

    When customers have an issue, they won’t simply call your call center. More often, they’ll go straight to social media to report their experiences and demand answers.

    This is especially challenging because your agents will often need to address their issues in a public forum. As stated earlier, customer feedback is essential for your call center reporting. Not only should you collect it, but you should acknowledge it as well — especially if the feedback is negative.  

    If a customer provides positive feedback online, be sure to thank them. If they provide negative feedback, apologize and communicate your plans to rectify the issue.  Close the loop by responding promptly and kindly, whether it’s on a public thread or private message. Your public responses should not only satisfy your customer’s need for attention or information, it should also promote your brand positively for all onlookers to see.  

    Responding to customer inquiries and complaints on social media not only helps your customer — it also publicly demonstrates your strong brand values! #ContactCenterLife #CustomerServiceStrategyClick To Tweet
    The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

  • And when is the shift over?

    If you sell your time as the measure of the work you do, the work is over when the shift ends. Clock in, clock out.

    If you sell your output as the measure of the work, your work is over when the inbox is empty. Once you’ve made all the pizzas that were ordered, you’re done.

    But more and more, our work can be endless. One more sales call might lead to one more sale. One more cycle of innovation might lead to the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. One more post might get you the traffic you’re on the hook for.

    In a competitive marketplace, self-regulating the length of our shift is a lot to ask. Given that the list of things to do is intentionally endless, it’s on each of us to decide what ‘enough’ looks like. Because more time isn’t always the answer.

  • Turning your employees into organizational culture and brand ambassadors

    Employees have the power to be a company’s best supporters or its worst detractors. You’ve likely read positive posts from employees on LinkedIn celebrating their company’s values, commitment to diversity and inclusion. However, you’ve surely also noticed when employees share negative reviews and experiences on sites like Glassdoor and their social media profiles.  Employees are surely essential actors of any marketing and communication strategy. Corporate leaders have…
    The post Turning your employees into organizational culture and brand ambassadors appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine.

  • How to Put Together Interesting Abandoned Cart Emails (and Examples)

    Online shoppers are notoriously fickle, and why shouldn’t they be? There are so many options and avenues at their fingertips that there’s no sense in wildly committing to the first products they see. The multi-step checkout process allows them to toy with potential purchases — chalk certain items down as likely buys while they look…
    The post How to Put Together Interesting Abandoned Cart Emails (and Examples) appeared first on Benchmark Email.

  • 50 Newsletter Ideas to Keep Your Email Calendar Busy

    Keep your email marketing calendar busy all year round with these fresh and creative newsletter ideas + get inspired by some fantastic examples from our inboxes

  • How to Hire a Social Media Manager: Our Exact Process and Job Description

    For any company, building and maintaining a social media presence is a key marketing strategy for reaching more potential customers. A company’s social media profiles also act as a space where anyone can get to know your company much better, helping to build a stronger online brand. While we know a lot of small business owners who manage their own social media profiles and love doing it, for some it makes more sense to bring on a dedicated social media manager to free up their time and creative energy.
    I’ve recently been going through the process of hiring a social media manager for Buffer so I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far to help anyone else who wants to bring on a social media manager for their team. I’ve broken it down into five sections: writing a job description, crafting a custom application, promoting the role, and the interview process. Plus, I also included our entire job description at the end. Feel free to grab any part of it that you might need for your own listing!
    Let’s dive in! ✨
    1. Write a Thoughtful Job Description
    The first step in any hiring process is writing a strong job description. While this is necessary for promoting the job, it’s also an exercise in defining exactly what you want out of this role.
    Take the time to really dig deep into your business needs, asking questions like:

    How much experience do I want this person to have? A mistake I see many business owners make is outsourcing social media to an intern or junior hire to save money. This can work if you’re prepared to provide training and support, but if you aren’t, then you should aim to hire someone with more experience.

    What resources will I be able to provide? Expecting a social media manager to run social strategy and create videos and visual elements and write copy and do customer support and run ads and report on analytics—as you can tell, it’s a lot. Think about what your key needs are and what resources you have to help cover some of the other bases.

    What channels do I want them to focus on? I always recommend brands focus on their social media marketing on one or two channels, rather than trying to be great at them all. Given how many specialties there are in social media marketing, you should also look for candidates with specific experience in those channels. It’s also important to consider whether you want someone with more experience on paid or organic since those are such different skill sets.

    At Buffer, we ultimately decided we wanted a candidate who is skilled at organic Twitter, who has specific experience in our industry, and who is strong in community management (but not necessarily customer support, since we have resources for that).
    Check out our final job description at the end of this post, which you can adapt to your own needs, at the end of this article.
    2. Craft a Custom Application
    In addition to asking candidates for a resume and cover letter, we included custom application questions, which can help you quickly get a good sense of which candidates are right for your company.
    Ours were:

    Share your Twitter account:
    If you don’t have a Twitter account, describe your experience on Twitter: (In 280 characters or less.)
    Share the link to a tweet you’re proud of that you sent from a brand account as an example:
    Why did you choose that tweet? (In 280 characters or less.)
    Share the link to a social media graphic or short-form video content that you created:
    What’s your favorite social network? Why? (In 280 characters or less.)
    What do you think is the future of organic social media? (In 280 characters or less.)
    How would you respond to the following tweets as Buffer’s Social Media Manager? (In 280 characters or less.)

    Some things to consider when writing application questions for your brand:

    Hone in on the platforms you’re focusing on. Again, it was most important to us that we find someone great with Twitter, so many of our questions were aimed at understanding their experience there. If you’re spending more time on Instagram, you might ask questions like: What are your favorite Instagram features? Which do you think would be strongest for our brand? If TikTok is a focus: What’s an example of a TikTok you created for a brand? What TikTok trends do you think are aligned with our brand?

    Request responses in social media format. Because Twitter is so key for us, I limited responses to 280 characters or less, and I’m glad I did. For one, it made applications much faster to review. But it also helped me test whether applicants could communicate succinctly, which is critical for social media. If you’re hunting for an Instagram or TikTok pro, you might get creative, asking them to create short-form videos in response.

    Put them to work for your brand. Including a very small assignment as part of the initial application can help you get a quick gauge if a candidate understands your brand voice, which can be hard to teach if it’s not already aligned. We chose to ask people to respond to a few sample tweets.

    3. Promote the Role on Social (Of Course!)
    My biggest piece of advice for getting your job listing in front of the right candidates is to promote it using social media, given that’s where they’re already hanging out. If you’re looking for a Twitter pro, make sure to tweet the job posting—both from your brand account and the personal accounts of teammates related to the role.
    We have a newsletter that goes out to anyone interested in jobs at Buffer when we open a new role, and in addition to that, I personally shared the listing on Twitter and LinkedIn. It got a ton of traction on both platforms and made it easy for other folks both from Buffer and from outside of Buffer to easily share it, too.

    We’re hiring for some fun roles on @buffer’s Marketing team: 👩🏻‍💻 Social Media Manager 👩🏻‍💻 Community Manager 👩🏻‍💻 Product Marketing Manager Buffer is: 🌏 Fully distributed 💸 Transparent with pay ❤️ A great bunch of folksMore ⬇️https://t.co/d6LqiEL38r— Hailley Griffis (@hailleymari) November 29, 2021

    Ultimately, we promoted the role for three weeks and ended up with 704 candidates. We expected a large pool of candidates for this role since this is our industry. Depending on your size and how much you’re promoting, I’d recommend giving it at least four to six weeks to give people time to apply. You can always review candidates on a rolling basis, too.
    Learn more about using social media to hire for your business from Buffer’s Director of People, Nicole Miller.
    4. Structure the Interview Process for Success
    Interview processes can vary wildly depending on your style, the size of your company, and more, but there are a few practices that have helped us identify the right candidates:

    Consider a test assignment. We start our interview process for roles with a lot of applicants with a take-home assignment, which is helpful for us to further narrow down candidates. Even if you have a smaller pool, it can be a valuable way for you to test other skills. For instance, if you got a sense of their content creation in the initial application, you might test their strategic abilities by asking them to create a content calendar for one week.

    Dig into soft skills. By the time you sit down to talk to a candidate, you likely have a good sense of their social media abilities and qualifications, so spend the interview digging more into the soft skills that are important for success in this role. Will they be able to collaborate with different teammates? Are they flexible enough to adapt as social channels change? Do they thrive on interacting with people online day after day?

    Include questions around culture and values. We always have an entire values interview as part of Buffer’s process, but smaller companies may just want to integrate a few values-related questions into the interview. One of my favorites: To dig into the Buffer value of “improve consistently,” we’ll often ask what someone has done recently to improve their skills in a certain area. Questions like this should help you find a candidate who is excited to work for your company and who will seamlessly fit into the ways you work.

    Once you decide to hire a social media manager, you probably want to bring someone on quickly, but it’s worth taking the time you need to find the right person. This is an important role—essentially a spokesperson for your company—so it’s not the place to cut corners. By going through the process thoughtfully, you’re sure to find a hire who will not only take social off your plate, they’ll scale your channels to new heights.

    Have you hired a social media manager before? If so, I’d love to hear your experience with it! Or do you have any questions I didn’t cover here? Reach out anytime on Twitter.
    As promised, here’s the full job description we used recently. ⬇️
    The Buffer Social Media Manager Job Description
    As a Social Media Manager, you will own Buffer’s social media channels. In practice, this means creating written, video, and visual content across social networks, maintaining a content calendar and coordinating across teams to ensure that our social presence reflects what’s happening at Buffer. You will also be a key person in our existing community on social media, helping to make sure it is healthy and thriving and taking it to the next level through active engagement on social media. This is a key role for us as a social media software company as our social profiles are a massive part of our brand and one of the first things that our customers see and get to know us through. You’ll work closely with the rest of the Marketing team to create social media content on a weekly and monthly basis, as well as work closely with our Customer Advocacy team to keep them aware of upcoming planned content. Day-to-day, you’ll work hands-on scheduling posts, following industry trends, gathering insights, plus engaging with our community and customers, building relationships, and surfacing trends from within our community that can impact our overall strategy.
    Who You’ll Work With
    In this role, you’ll report to the Head of Public Relations. Day-to-day you’ll work closely with other marketing teammates as well as the agencies and freelancers that work with our marketing team. As a member of a marketing organization, you will help shape Buffer’s overall brand through exceptional social media posts and maintaining a strong brand voice and presence across platforms.
    Responsibilities

    Own creating social media content. Coming up with ideas for ways to promote upcoming content pieces, product launches, and any other announcements ensuring content resonates with the customer and the brand. This includes creating written content, graphics, and videos ranging from several seconds to several minutes.

    Own the social media content calendar and planning process. Planning, managing, and coordinating the content calendar, researching upcoming relevant news, events, or holidays. Leading weekly or biweekly social content brainstorming sessions.

    Own community management. Responding to and engaging with our community across social media platforms, primarily Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, as well as responding to tickets in Zendesk.

    Experiment and use data to inform strategy. Extract insights and learnings from each social channel and from your time engaging with our community, use these insights to inform our social strategy.

    Advocate for our community. Within Buffer you are aware of our social media community’s perspective on various things from our product and culture and act as an advocate internally to make sure their perspective is taken into account.

    Keep up to date with industry trends. Ensuring to keep on top of changes and new features across platforms and easily share those updates with Buffer’s audience on social media and within the company.

    Be a strong Buffer voice: Adopt Buffer’s voice and tone across content work and ensure that anything published on any social channel is a good fit for Buffer’s brand and voice.

    Qualifications

    Must have prior experience creating social media content for a brand, preferably a software company.
    Must have experience creating social media graphics and short-form video content, like Instagram Reels or TikToks.
    Must have experience using tools to plan and collaborate on social media posts with several teammates.
    Must have prior experience engaging with a community on social media and building relationships online.
    Excited and energized at the prospect of spending the day-to-day creating, scheduling, and posting content as well as engaging with our community on social media.
    Outstanding written and verbal communication skills: You care about producing content that will resonate with a broad global audience.
    Ability to create engaging content and ensure a consistent brand voice.
    Strong understanding of important social media metrics and data.
    Bias towards action with an ability to have a high output in the form of creating social media posts.

  • Christmas specials lucky draw event

    Subscribe your email address during Dec 13th to Dec 19th to have a chance be one of the 100 lucky winners! If you win the glow in the dark blanket, please submit your shipping address to our email ([pinkpumservice@gmail.com](mailto:pinkpumservice@gmail.com)) before 11:59 pm of 12/22/2021(PST), so we can deliver the prize to you. Otherwise, the prize will be invalid.
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