#Hangout Recap: How to Turn Negativity into Positivity on Social

Exceptional customer service on social is rare.

Research shows that 70% of companies ignore customer complaints on Twitter, even though simply acknowledging the problem and showing you’re listening to conversations around your brand, seems to improve customer psychology 83% of the time.

Handling negative mentions on social still seems to be a challenge for businesses of all sizes for various reasons: limited knowledge on the power and multiple benefits of social customer care, fear of greater exposure to complaints, lack of budget and staff resources, and so on.

As we believe in the great value that excellent social customer services can bring to businesses, we asked our friends and social media experts Dr. Lizz Gross, Jason Falls and Brett Relander, to join our one-hour long Hangout, facilitated by our very own Dinah Alobeid. They shared their top tips and best practices on how to turn negativity into positivity on social.

In case you missed it, here is an overview of the most important ideas and learnings we gathered, so let’s have a look!

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How do you define exceptional customer service?

The discussion kicked off establishing how each of our panelists describes exceptional customer service and what they value most. For Liz, it’s all about the people that represent your brand on social: “Exceptional customer service comes from people that are truly dedicated to the brand, it’s hard work, responsiveness, compassion and solving problems”.

Additionally, Jason emphasizes the importance of consistency across your social channels: “Great customer service is conversational and humanized”, whilst Brett puts a premium on understanding your audience: “One of the most important aspects of excellent customer service is understanding customers’ needs and doing your best to solve their problem and turn those negative mentions into positives when necessary”.

 

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Why do you think exceptional customer service is so rare?

Our three guest speakers agreed that companies sometimes struggle to live up to customers’ expectations because of scalability and budget issues.

If we’re talking customer service, most of the time it involves 1-2-1 communication, and to improve it, you have to put more money behind and show the ROI as well, which can be challenging – Jason Falls

However, smart brands learn from the unfiltered feedback they get from their customers and make pertinent changes. Building up on that, Brett explains: “brands can reduce the number of complaints or customer service enquires by actively learning from the feedback they are receiving, make product or services improvements and respond to customer demands. If you’re doing this successfully, then you should have less money to invest into hiring more customer service staff”.

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How can social customer care be improved?

Consumer demand for timely, helpful assistance on social has increased rapidly over the last five years, forcing brands to embrace this shift and start paying more attention to what is being said about them even outside their official channels.

Liz explains that the first step is to listen and use technology to your advantage: “You need a really good tool to maximize your customer care team’s time, so they’re not spending long hours trying to sort through thousands of tweets and Facebook posts to see what matters, but they are presented with the issues that need immediate attention”.

Furthermore, James and Brett emphasize the importance of setting people’s expectations upfront and hiring knowledgeable, passionate people, who can confidently represent your brand online.