Customer experience (CX) can be defined as customers’ perception of how your company treats them. No wonder most organizations recognize CX as a key differentiating factor, as these perceptions often determine a customer’s relationship with any brand. 

Leveraging Social Media for Improved CX

According to Gartner, CX drives more than two-thirds of customer loyalty, outperforming brand and price. Yet, over 70% of CX leaders struggle to design projects that drive customer loyalty.

Well, sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to see. Today, customer expectations are evolving at a fast pace, yet, the fundamental demands remain the same in terms of speed, convenience, and friendly service. PwC confirms that these traits are highly rated by consumers and companies. Companies that wish to improve their CX must prioritize technologies that foster or provide these benefits over adopting technology for its sake. For example, up to 48% of consumers expect a response to their social media questions and complaints within 24 hours. They also use social media to vent their frustrations against a brand or praise the good work or extra efforts taken by a brand. Therefore, investing in social media monitoring tools or deploying live chat software or a chatbot in your social media channels are sure-shot ways of improving your CX by improving your response time to customer complaints and reacting to their demands pro-actively through social listening. 

When discussing the importance of social media, we all know that people are spending increased amounts of time on their social accounts, especially during the pandemic. A study suggests that 54% of social browsers use social media to search for products. This stat isn’t surprising, considering that a brand’s social channels are ideal for scouting user-generated content like reviews and complaints. Brands that understand this can capitalize on their social media presence to curate exceptional experiences for their customers. 

In essence, small changes like having a customer service strategy to monitor and respond to feedback on your social media handles, a clear escalation channel, and a fixed timeframe for responding to social media comments and questions can help brands improve their CX considerably in a cost-effective manner.

Here are five proven strategies to boost your social customer experience:

1. Know your Audience

Businesses often struggle to get engagement on social media because they don’t know who their target audience is. That’s why it is crucial to identify your target audience and their pain points to figure out how your product or service can help them and curate your social media strategy accordingly. 

You can start by creating customer profiles using analytics to figure out the span of people most interested in your solution and where on social media do they like to hang out. Next, use surveys, scour competitor sites, and monitor the interactions of your prospects on social media to comprehend their needs and fulfill them to improve your CX.

2. Ensure 24/7 Service

Speedy and reliable customer support are cornerstones of excellent customer experience. However, it isn’t feasible to have an army of customer support agents working 24/7 to boost your CX. A better alternative is deploying a chatbot across your communication channels like social media, live chat, and mobile apps to deliver 24/7 service. In case you are worried about the mechanical nature of the conversation, modern chatbots employ natural language processing to contextually understand and respond to user queries by guiding them to relevant FAQs or connecting them to human agents in case of complicated requests. Data indicates that chatbots can answer up to 80% of routine questions without human assistance, saving customer service costs by almost 30%. Besides, AI is highly trainable, and its efficiency improves with usage, leading to even better results in the future.

3. Strive for an Omnichannel Experience

Stats indicate that up to 73% of shoppers use multiple channels to make a purchase. It falls upon you to ensure a consistent experience across their preferred devices, stressing the need for omnichannel CX strategies over multichannel.

Here are some numbers to drive home the importance of omnichannel customer experience:

• 63% of millennials begin their social interactions online.

• 40% of customers prefer to talk to real support agents on the phone, especially when discussing a complicated financial problem

• 63% of US consumers prefer self-service for simple customer service tasks, such as website, mobile app or live chat

Thus, if you wish to improve your CX, it is imperative to provide a seamless experience across your digital channels. To achieve this, you can consider an end-to-end solution like the Acquire customer engagement platform that lets you track and respond to all your customer interactions from a single dashboard. The platform also includes capabilities like live chat, video and audio calling, co-browsing, and chatbots to ensure fast, reliable, and cost-effective service across your digital channels.

4. Reward your Loyal Customers

Social media is indeed a great place to listen to your customers and respond to their concerns swiftly. However, social media can also be used to reward your most loyal customers for keeping them engaged as well as building deeper brand relationships. 

For example, while platforms like Instagram and Twitter are great for developing your brand identity, they can also be used for encouraging interactions through user-generated content by hosting social media contests and giveaways. 

Sephora, a leading chain of beauty and personal care stores, regularly uses Instagram to engage its users by holding frequent contests and giveaways. Several brands also encourage users to post their pictures, like the Dalgona trend, where coffee brands urged users to post their Dalgona coffee pics and win a chance to be featured on the respective brand’s page. An excellent way to boost sales and earn loyalty by rewarding users for their support. 

Conclusion

Social media provides brands with an unparalleled opportunity to connect with their potential and existing customers. However, to make the most of this opportunity, it is vital to be present in the right places: the preferred social media hangouts of your target audience. Besides, it is important not to spam your users. Rather, provide them with interesting and useful content and keep them engaged by talking about causes they support as well as hosting contests and giveaways. We suggest having a social media posting calendar and integrating your messengers with live chat and chatbot software for round the clock engagement and social listening. 

About the Author

Savan Kharod is a Digital Marketing Professional at Acquire. He loves to share his knowledge and experience in digital marketing, social media marketing, customer service and growth marketing. In his free time, Savan likes to backpack and explore new places.