Are your customers telling you the whole truth?
It’s time to dust off your social media accounts and begin using them more efficiently. Many of us make the common mistake of neglecting our company social media accounts, but these sites can be extremely helpful in promoting your services, and most importantly engaging with your customers.
Social media empowers customers to share their experiences with others. With that being said, consider what happens when you have an unhappy customer on your hands. According to an infographic from Zendesk, 45% of people shared their bad customer service reviews via social media. 63% of people read those negative posts online. You can do something about this. The following are a few ways to effectively use social media to nurture your relationships with customers, alleviate customer complaints, and enhance your brand.
Monitor what’s trending about your company
Whether you tweet or not, your customers will talk about you. It’s up to you to make sure they have good things to say. Be an active listener online when it comes to what’s being said about your brand. Are your customers happily posting photos of their finished projects and referring your company to friends, or are they posting about the mess left behind after construction and the grief of dealing with billing issues? See what’s out there, and decide what your communication strategy should be.
Embrace social customer service and respond to your customers
The concept of social customer service is something that’s being rapidly adopted by companies across all industries, including homebuilders, remodelers, and home services contractors. It’s important as your company begins to engage with customers via social media that you develop a strategy for responses. As a best practice, ensure that whoever is responsible for monitoring, posting content, and responding to customers, strongly understands your business and feels comfortable asking for help if the answer to a customer’s question isn’t apparent. The amount of time between when a customer posts a question, and when their question is answered is also important. We strive to respond to questions within twenty-four hours. If a solution to a customer’s question isn’t something that can take a day to answer, post a progress update to let them know you’re actively working toward an answer.
It’s also critical to know when a customer’s question should be taken offline. If the answer to their question includes specific details about their project, like pricing, for example, you may want to consider politely responding that you’ll give them a call to discuss. When approaching negative comments, avoid getting defensive. This is a golden opportunity for your company. Treating unhappy customers with compassion and finding a solution to their complaints will transform your company into a customer service leader in the eyes of existing and prospective customers.
Develop compelling content
If you’re finding a lack of engagement from customers or prospective customers on your company’s social media pages, take a look at the type of content you’re posting. Would it be appealing and interesting to anyone outside of your company? Take a look at our post, three things homeowners and homebuyers look for when choosing a builder, remodeler, or contractor for ideas on the type of content customers and prospective customers find appealing. Dynamic content is always a crowd pleaser, try posting videos and photos to turn up the likes, shares, and re-tweets.
Social media provides the ideal platform for you to empower your loyal customers to share reviews, project photos, and ideas with the rest of your fans and followers. GuildQuality provides homebuilders, remodelers, and home services contractors with the opportunity to maximize their presence on Facebook and Twitter, producing fresh content provided directly from their customer satisfaction surveys. Learn more about our social media integration.
