No matter what you’re buying these days you’ve got more choice than ever before, times may be hard but there’s still a lot of competition out there and you need to be monitoring more than just your price.

Most businesses claim their customer service is their USP or at least it’s something they take very seriously but for most, their idea of customer service starts and ends with a call centre of staff offering refunds and apologies. There’s a whole other dimension of customer service missing from this strategy and that’s social media.

Know When You’re Being Talked About Or To

Having that call centre or someone sat at the end of the phone dealing with complaints is great for those customers who actually make the effort to get in touch. Most dissatisfied customers are just going to have a moan to their friends and when their friend’s number in the hundreds across several social media platforms you’re not just looking at a small handful of people any more.

You can set up alerts to see whenever your brand name is mentioned so if you know someone isn’t happy with you there’s no excuse for not making things right.

Admit When You Make A Mistake

Nine times out of ten a customer is going to be upset because you haven’t delivered either what you implied you’d deliver or what you promised you’d deliver. If you’ve noticed someone online getting irate with you the worst thing you can do is snap back.

It might be the customers fault, they might have been completely unreasonable but many people still hold onto that old misguided adage the customer is always right, we know they’re not but if this conversation is being had virally you need to make sure you’re always the living definition of good customer service even if that does cost you cash. It’s always better to lose some pennies than it is your reputation.

Interact With Your Customers

If you’re not tracking your social media channels then you have no idea what’s been said about you good or bad. For all you know there’s a customer out there tweeting to their friends or writing a blog post all about the amazing product or service they received from you.

It wouldn’t cost you a penny to send them a thank you tweet or leaving a comment on their blog. If you wanted to take it one step further you might even want to offer them a token gift like 10% off their next order or if they’ve given you quite a lot of good publicity you might want to make a bigger gesture.

Keeping Up With The Jones’s

You always keep an eye on the competition, you visit their web site every now and then to see what they’re doing and you check your prices against there’s on a regular bases but how often do you check their social media?

Are you friends with them on facebook, do you follow them on Twitter, do you subscribe to their blog? It’s one thing checking up on them every once in a while but having that information coming right to you is going to be a lot easier. Whilst you’re monitoring your brand name mentions online you might want to set up some alerts for theirs too. I’m not recommending you jump in with your wooden spoon if they’re getting some negative comments but you might want to be on hand to offer an alternative supplier to the disgruntled customer especially if your competitor isn’t bothering to monitor their social media properly.

Jess is an SEO currently working on Forever Crystal who have a wide selection of glassware and decanters