When’s the last time you actually called a business to learn something? Unless it was time-sensitive like booking a restaurant (in this pandemic? Haha), calling businesses… just aren’t a thing anymore. A Nielson survey commissioned by Facebook found that 64% of people said they’d prefer to message than to call a business. That’s not very surprising. Calling takes more energy, some people are shy, and messaging is an easier, hands-off approach.
At a time in our lives when we’re overwhelmed by just about everything — thank you, pandemic-circumstances — messaging is the balm of relief. No human contact, it’s straight to the point, and provides instant customer success. It then makes sense that Gartner says 60% of all customer service requests will be managed via digital channels by 2023.
Is your business prepared? That’s the question you need to ask yourself in the coming years. Surprisingly, 71% of organizations have either not started investing in social customer care yet, or don’t plan to invest at all. So if your messaging system isn’t up to par, it’s not like you’re making a fatal error… yet.
Ring-ring. There’s still time to ditch the phone.
Times they are a-changin’
In a more recent social media trends survey by Hootsuite, data says 59% of respondents agreed that social customer care has increased in value for their organization. So although the majority of organizations haven’t invested or won’t plan to invest in social customer care, the majority of businesses are also aware that it can be valuable.
That’s an important thing to know because if a customer messages 2 competing businesses, and one is quick-to-draw while the other business ghosts the customer, you can guess which business is going to earn the customer’s trust.
Why haven’t businesses acted on improving social customer care? Probably because there’s a billion other things to worry about. But if you get a chance, invest in your social customer care.
How to make your social customer care excellent
If you’re going to up your social-customer-care game, you’ll have to take it seriously. Getting ghosted by a business is no fun. 60% of internet users say bad customer service is a concern when making an online purchase.
Make sure your messaging system is able to respond quickly. Invest in a dedicated customer service team that’s ready to respond to messages, or automated response templates for frequently asked questions.
Chatbots are really helpful in providing the initial customer service. They can respond instantly, narrow down the customer’s query, and make it easier to provide customer service.
Marina Bay Sands is a great example. “The integrated luxury resort used a bot for Messenger to offer personalized travel itineraries and increase discovery and engagement, which increased new Messenger conversations by 8.3X and boosted views for shopping and dining website content by 38X.”
Scroll down the page and you’ll see a video of a chatbot making recommendations based on the customer’s responses. The bot also anticipated further questions by offering relevant info to people’s queries, and used a mix of text and images for an immersive experience.
Wow. That’s better customer service than you can sometimes receive in person. Who doesn’t love recommendations? A whopping 91% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from brands that remember who they are and that provide relevant recommendations.
Final thoughts on messaging
We’ve skimmed across making social media customer service excellent, but if you want the full dive, you can read our article on how to best improve your customer experience.
Just as landline phones became a thing of the past and cellphones rose to prominence, now it’s calling that’s becoming a thing of the past, and instant messaging that’s rising. It’s efficient, quick, personable, and what customers want.
So if you’ve been slacking in the messaging department, it’d be good to get on it! You might be surprised at how providing excellent customer service can help your business succeed.
One last thing, don’t you think social customer care via messaging goes hand in hand with our latest on social shopping? Shopping on the app, receiving customer service on the app, we reckon there’s a future of customer service here.
We’re in the middle of interesting times aren’t we? Best of luck navigating them – and remember Voice123’s professional voice actors are standing by to help you get your voice messaging out there too!
