The good mixture in 2022

We often think of social media as a marketing tool. There’s an obvious reason for this: social media is fertile ground for a brand to connect with its audience, hear opinions, Promotion of creative content, start conversations and generate a sense of community with his customers.

In other words, social media campaigns are excellent additions to any brand’s marketing strategy.

By now we already know that this is just one of the benefits that social channels can bring to a brand. In this series of Rocking content‘s article in partnership with Hootsuite, We have seen that social media can directly help the sales team and be used to it promote a shopping experience, as much as its KPIs can be shared with other departments in the company.

These channels are important touchpoints to start a conversation with your customers. Ultimately, how does this impact a brand’s customer service and beyond that, its customer success?

According to HootsuiteSocial trends 2022, 59% of survey respondents agree that social customer care has gained value for their business over the past 12 months.

Businesses are starting to see social media as a customer service channel as well, and the motivation behind this is simple: people are looking for these channels to talk to businesses. Whether they are looking for information, making a purchase or solving a problem, they expect a response that is as fast, complete and helpful as any other official brand’s communication channel.

Data has shown that 64% of people prefer this Message instead of calling a company. According to gardener, by 2023, 60% of all customer service inquiries will be handled through digital channels.

Have great customer service and a well-functioning customer success department in your company is vital to the business. Online presence, quick problem resolution and access to product information are key to satisfying customers and building trust.

The customer wants problems to be solved easily and quickly

Classic situation: you have a problem with your internet and choose your service provider. Then you enter your account information and wait for the operator to speak to you.

Sometimes you have to wait in line for many minutes or hours. Then someone will answer you. you explain your problem This person asks you to go through some basic troubleshooting steps that you have already tried. Then they transfer you.

You wait a little longer. You are speaking to another operator. You have to explain again what your problem is. And then that person can’t always help you and has to refer you to a different support level or manager. And so forth.

With the power of the internet, people know that their problems can damage a company’s reputation if shared by many people on social channels.

Of course, as a company, you want to offer your customers the best service. But on social channels, when an issue goes viral, even people who have never contacted you will avoid doing business with you or stop working with you because of other customers’ issues.

That’s why, in the social media age, making the relationship between marketing and customer success closer is so important. Marketing knows how to monitor social services, and customer success knows how to solve customers’ problems. It’s important to offer a solution to your customers on every channel they use to contact you.

This alignment can help build closer relationships with your customers and avoid an image crisis due to a lack of monitoring of social media mentions.

Of course, the number of social messages received varies between companies. A B2C online retailer, for example, will receive many more inquiries and will need to build faster and more robust processes to offer solutions to customers.

But B2B companies like it too Rocking content, with most of their inquiries coming from more traditional sources, need to monitor their social media accounts and develop processes to integrate better marketing and customer success.

And of course that is a challenge. Despite increasing demand HootsuiteThe report shows that 71% of companies have either not yet started investing in social customer care or have no plans to invest at all.

Here, at Rocking content, our marketing and customer success teams seek to build a more holistic understanding of customers and foster successful partnerships on a broader scale. Here are a few tips based on what we’ve learned so far.

1. Marketers should work with CSM teams to view their campaigns from a customer success perspective

Social media is the opportunity to enhance the client’s scrolling work experience. Importantly, when marketers strategize, they not only promote messaging and content to attract new customers, but also to retain existing customers.

For example, let’s think of a huge traditional brand: Coca-Cola. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t know what Coca-Cola is, but the company continues to advertise itself. Why? To assert his position. On social media we have another ingredient: interactivity. Anyone can talk to you and get in touch with you at any time.

As Christoph Neut, Vice President of Sales at Sparkcentral (Hootsuite) said in the Social Trends 2022 report, “When you bundle social marketing and social care, you actually cover the core outcomes that have a huge impact on the customer buying experience and the bottom line of your business. That’s the big picture that many companies still don’t see.”

The dot tries to add value to every interaction. Customer Success Managers (CSMs) operate primarily with this mindset, and what a company plans to do on social media could often benefit from this mindset as well.

2. Proactive listening at the macro level

With updated regulations, unexpected current events and new technologies, what challenges do your customers face? Different types of social media can alert you to these challenges, but you have to look for them.

Proactive listening differs from active listening in that customers may not speak to you directly. You might consider using social media to listen to a client’s customers. As you might expect, a lot of your customers’ pain comes from the pain of their own customers.

Implementation tips:

• Which industry publications do your customers subscribe to? Many publications will be present on social media, even if they are traditionally paid publications.
• What hashtags are trending in your customers’ industries? What excites you the most? What are their personalities excited about?
• Do any of your clients use influencer marketing? What channels or accounts are influencers in this space?

3. Micro-level care

Customer success programs often depend on finding ways to take care of individual customers and clients. Just like individuals, clients perceive care in different ways.

By carefully reviewing an individual client’s social media campaigns, a CSM is almost certain to find information on the key goals and messages to associate with the business partnership. Starting conversations on the customer’s own social media can help build trust in the relationship and uncover opportunities to customize that customer’s solution.

4. Research social proof for the benefit of your customers

Competitors to your clients will have their own social media presence, and this can be a useful topic of discussion for delving deeper into a client’s goals.

Most customers do not want to copy their competitors. However, when a customer is unsure of the value of a solution or has trouble imagining an outcome, social proof can be a powerful tool to gain understanding.

Social media marketers today play an important role in building a company’s holistic CS. But as you can see, this is not an easy challenge.

Many companies are unprepared for this increasing demand and don’t know how to combine the two areas (or just don’t see the point in it). In order to stand out, companies need to know how to maintain the quality of seamless communication with the customer at all touchpoints.

That was Rocking content‘s last article in collaboration with Hootsuite about his 2022 social trends. I really hope this series has helped you to delve deep into these trends and what you can do with all this information to improve your strategies.

If you want more insight into what social media marketing has in store for this year, check out the Hootsuite Social media trends 2022 Report. I invite you to do that too subscribe to our newsletter below to receive weekly emails on the best trends in marketing, business and tech (all with a sprinkling of knowledge from our specialists on how this is impacting your brand).