Social Media is a Customer Service Channel

hiiiiiiiiiiiiii! omg there’s officially 700 people here. what the heck?! if you’re new here, welcome to the family.

first off, i’m coming at you again with another friday send since i thought i hit “schedule” yesterday and well… turns out i did not. womp.

anyway, since we have last spoken, things have been insane in the membrane, but like in a good way??? if you’re going to expo west aka the food expos of all food expos in Anaheim, you’re also probably feeling the stress that comes with trying to jam two weeks of work into one and charging your social battery before the most insane week of social interactions.

introverts wya?

also, please hit me up if you’re going to be there once again! i’ll be there from tuesday - saturday and am staying in anaheim. you can dm me on instagram or twitter (i’m never calling it x) 🙂 i’ll be walking with friends most of the time, but you might see me chilling and walking around with the graza team in our costumes.

today, we’re chatting about customer service and social media and why it is a huge place for you to further the relationships with your customers, but also make them happy forever and ever and deliver them an experience outside of entertaining content.

we’ll chat through:

• what is social media customer service?

• why it’s important and if you should have separate support (aka your customer service team) outside of your community or social manager

• 6 quick tips to improve your customer experience on social media

• my current brand crush of the week

Before we hop into today’s newsletter, I want to give a shoutout to Jonathan and the team at Springboard, a boutique customer service agency that I have gotten the chance to work side by side with for the last two years on the Graza account, for sponsoring today’s newsletter. It means so much to me.

With brands like IQBAR, Made by Nacho, Aura Bora, Patrick Ta under their belt, Springboard has made my job easier when it comes to handling those “code red” moments with orders, helping customers with all problems no matter how small or how big, and just being a resource that the team can rely on since they answer in a very timely manner.

I mean at this point, Jonathan and Nikita feel like a full time members to me. Plus, their services speak for themselves considering that they are deemed an Elite Partner by Gorgias. Don’t believe me? Check it out.

If you’re looking to:

• have a team that can seamlessly capture your brand and tone of voice to help your customers so that you can get your time back and use it to focus on your brand priorities

• never have a backlog of tickets in your Gorgias inbox (P.S. they charge only for resolved CX tickets)

• handle facebook comments, service platform reviews, and even send out handwritten notes (!!!) to your customers.

Focus on what you need to (community management, content, etc.) and let the pros do what they do best. Plus, according to Sprout Social’s Social Index, 69% of customers expect a response the same day so why put that pressure on yourself?

Get start with a free onboarding or intro call with Springboard now and tell Jonathan I sent you 🙂 

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA CUSTOMER SERVICE?

As you can assume, it’s pretty simple. It’s support you offer your customers across your organic and paid social media channels. Requests from customers looking for help can come in the way of comments on posts, DMs across all platforms, reviews on your website, responses back to email and SMS blasts, or even a piece of content they made having a problem with your product. Most brands just send a quick answer, but the time it takes to respond appropriately is what sets great brands apart from the good ones.

In 2024, consumers use social media as a way to gain the attention of a brand they need help from whether tweeting out (i’m very guilty of this in dire situations plz don’t judge me), posting an instagram story tagging the brand, and expect a reaction and fast since they know that humans are usually on the other side.

This is why it’s important to invest in it properly because it can:

• Boost customer loyalty → Did you know that more than half of consumers agree that the quality of customer service they receive, especially on social media, influences if they’ll shop with the brand in the future? First impressions matter.

• Increase general brand awareness → A moment for the brand or a piece of content can take off, leading to tons of new followers and comments about your brand allowing you to get in front of new potential customers. For example, Graza released a video about some caps being too tight that we thought would be good to those affected to let them know a workaround, but 33K likes, 883K views, 2.3K shares, and 400+ comments later, we had people joining us who had no idea who we are, but buying from us due to taking accountability and apologizing to our customers.

• Teach a brand how to properly and effectively manage some fires online. Sometimes, one comment or post can cause a domino affect. At the end of the day, it’s easier to talk about negative experiences better than the good ones and products people love. The faster you act, the faster people will hopefully look past what happened. If people can see that you’re taking ownership in answering questions, comments, and accepting their feedback, they’ll have more respect for you in the end, most of the time.

Overall, if you are a brand with a HEAVY online direct to consumer presence and experience and are very social-forward, I personally would love a CX team or internal team to be handling more CX-focused questions such as “where’s my order?”, “i need to change my address”, “a part is broken or faulty” vs. a community manager who should be focusing on building and expanding the community through commenting on content and inserting the brand into conversations vs. spending their entire time in Gorgias and Shopify checking orders at scale. That is the longest run-on sentence ever.

An example of a teams that I have gotten to work with that had the format down extremely well was Verb Energy given their high subscription rate and SMS-focus. Their community manager handled all story reposts and commenting back on those and seeding to creators. Their CX team would be in the DMs (shoutout to the split DM inbox feature) handling orders.

How To Improve Your Customer Service On Social Media

1. Invest in a tool to give a bigger view! Apps like Gorgias can allow you to connect a majority of your social media platforms, such as your Facebook Messenger, Ads, Instagram DMs and answer customers there while being able to tackle their open or closed tickets.

2. Create a weekly or monthly top-questions tracker! I love having teams put together a list every month, but especially every week if we are seeing common themes, around what people are asking the most, whether it’s an “issue” or just basic education around a product. This can help lead the content strategy and be sure to include more content in around those asks.

3. Get personal. This should not even have to be written, but don’t give a canned and basic response. People aren’t stupid. They can tell when it’s copy and paste.

4. Set a standard operating procedure for specific scenarios. Whether someone has been at a brand for a while or is new, it is nice to have a procedure for what should happen after someone comments that they are having an issue. For example, what information do we ask for when dm’ing them about their order?

5. Use social listening and check your brand hashtags to see if people are mentioning anything negative about your brand. Also, pay attention the comments of bigger videos (even if positive) to see if folks may not have had the same experience. I use Brand24 or just the simple search functions on platforms via the search bar.

6. Use feedback as fuel. There’s always room to get better.

Listening to your customers and being there for them across the board is important, but social media is the first place anyone will and can go. Take care of your account, take care of your people, and you’ll be doing more than most.

BRAND OF THE WEEK: SOFT SERVICES

Brand of the week is when I pick one brand I have been using and love, enjoy their content, or truly just love them for any other reason. This week’s is a brand I’ve been using since their launch: Soft Services, body care products you have been looking for all of your life. Rebecca and the team are literal body skin experts.

Fun Fact: They recently just launched in Sephora!

Growing up, I have always dealt with KP on the back of my arms aka those little bumps that are incredibly dry and annoying. I never knew of a solution and just chose to rock it. Until I bought Soft Services’ Buffing Bar, which legit changed my life. Smooth arms baby! From there, my collection evolved. I added their Carea Cream, an amazing toning moisturizing lotion. Then came Comfort Cleanse, a lightweight body wash and cleanser. Next was Speed Soak, which is a gel moisturizer and is amazing if you’re constantly in a rush (me) and don’t want to get held up having for your lotion to soak into your skin before putting on your clothes. Recently, I just added their Smoothing Solution, a lightweight exfoliant.

As you can tell, I am kinda obsessed. If you’ve been looking to treat the skin on your body just as well as you do the skin on your face, I would say that the Skin Essentials Bundle is a great place to start. Also, their unboxing experience is insane and too good that you almost don’t want to throw it out.

THAT’S A WRAP!

Alright, that’s it until I am coming at you live from the Expo West Craziness. I am off to continue my journey of working through the top 50 Law and Order SVU episodes. Highly recommend it to kill some time and relax.

As always, if you…

• have a question, thought, or just want to become friends — please just hit “reply”. your feedback only helps me get better and your questions and telling me what you want to see helps so much.

• have a friend, co-worker, client, or team that you think this newsletter would be helpful for then it would mean the world if you shared it! you can share the link coming up with them so that they can sign up 🙂 https://kendalldickieson.beehiiv.com/subscribe

• want to read past editions? click here: https://kendalldickieson.beehiiv.com/

luv u guys

See you on the flip side!

-KD

P.S. Yes, there are probably typos. I get excited and am not perfect.

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