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We believe that social media is a vital part of customer service—and that means you need powerful tools to enable you to take care of your customers on social. With Fyng, you can manage all your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram comments in one place and respond wherever you are. You can also create multiple profiles for different social accounts so that the right team members can be in charge of the right accounts.
Finally, with our reporting feature, you can easily see how users are engaging with your brand across different channels and get valuable insights into their behavior.
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Customer Service Social Media Tools
If you have a customer-facing business in 2021, it’s a given that your customers are talking to your business, or, indeed, about your business, on social media.
Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide a useful two-way communication channel with your customers. But it’s up to you as a company to have the right system in place to monitor, address, and optimise every social interaction a customer has with your brand.
Pretty much every business these days has its own social media channels that can be used for customers to find out engaging or exciting content, discover additional information about products or services, receive useful offers and special deals. Yet really successful companies know that it is not enough to simply have a social presence.
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, it’s essential to use social media strategically to support your customers in real-time. At the heart of your businesses’ social media strategy should be the aim to provide exceptional customer service.
Employing social media customer service software is how successful companies can provide outstanding customer support on social media and incorporate it seamlessly into their broader customer service strategy.
To help better communicate with your customers, social media customer service software is beneficial to help you manage enquiries, comments, and issues raised on social media. Research has shown that employing social media customer service software can significantly impact your bottom line — in fact, 88% of customers say they are less likely to purchase from a company that doesn’t offer customer service support via social media channels.
If your ecommerce business uses social media, you should also be using social media customer software to boost your brand and increase customer loyalty.
So, with this in mind, here are some of the best social media customer service software solutions for 2021.
What is Social Media Customer Service Software?
Social media software
Social media customer service software is a sophisticated, AI-driven software that provides you with an insight into your customers’ activities across social platforms online and helps deliver digital customer service solutions to meet these needs in real-time.
Social media customer service software also incorporates customer insights from social media into your wider customer service programme. It notifies your customer service team of customer issues raised across social media platforms so that they can be resolved efficiently.
For example, if a customer tweets about your brand, the software helps support your existing human-led customer support by identifying the tweet and helping to flag and resolve any issues. This is either directly on the social platform or by taking it to email or telephone to provide resolution through one of these other channels.
There are several ways in which social media customer service software can help your overall customer service programme:
- Analytics
One way in which social media customer service software can help is by providing sophisticated analytics and insights into what your customers are saying about your company or brand online, and what kind of help they might need.
By sifting through online data, the software can provide you with key insights about your customers by being able to ‘listen’ to what customers are saying on social media as well as gathering data on your customer too.
This helps you understand your customers, demographics, and the main pain points (or primary areas of satisfaction) and then address them appropriately.
- Chatbot
Chatbot software
Chatbots are automated, live online helpers based in artificial intelligence (AI), which help provide answers to your customers’ frequently asked questions. They are also a standard offering of social media customer service software.
Chatbots can be useful because they offer your customers instant online support. They help you demonstrate responsiveness to your customers by providing immediate answers to their everyday questions and issues.
For more complex questions that cannot be immediately resolved, chatbots can create helpdesk tickets, which will escalate the issue to a real, live customer support agent to provide further help during business hours.
- Social Scheduling and Publishing
Social media customer service software often also includes a publishing tool, where you can schedule social media messages to publish at a specific time. This is helpful when you’re crafting a solid social media strategy ahead of time to engage with your customers.
Improving your Standard Customer Service with the Right Software
Social media customer service software isn’t meant to replace traditional customer service provided by humans! It is intended to efficiently support it. Social media is typically part of a multi-channel customer service strategy that may include a call centre, email support tickets, live chat, and even a self-help portal. Social media customer service software, therefore, assists with the social side while integrating efficiently with your other customer service channels.
Like traditional customer service, social media customer service centres revolve around providing customers with the best possible service by responding to queries and issues in a timely, helpful fashion.
However, social media customer service differs from traditional customer service. Customer support focuses on social channels such as Facebook and Twitter. It employs digital tools such as social listening, tracking, and online alerts to identify and respond to all customers who have questions or problems. Its ability to monitor is invaluable.
By paying attention to what people are saying about your business or brand online, social media customer service software can offer social media customer service support to everyone talking about the company online — even those who haven’t contacted you directly!
For example, if you notice a Twitter user is tweeting about a problem with your product or service, even if they haven’t contacted you specifically, by employing social media customer service you can reach out to that user and help solve their problem. This ensures their social media post turns around and becomes a positive experience of your business, product or service instead.
It also relies on sophisticated automation and machine learning to identify and answer frequently asked questions. Where social media customer service software cannot solve a more complex, multi-layered customer problem, it can flag the issue to a real live human so that it can be resolved efficiently during business hours, ensuring that no customers fall through the cracks.
How Can Social Media Customer Service Software Help Your Business?
Social media customer service software can help your business understand who your customers are. This is effective by the real-time insights into your customer demographics and attitude to your brand online.
Social media customer service software also helps improve your relationships with your customers, since it flags conversations, both good and bad, prioritising them for you to respond to appropriately. The software can identify frequently asked questions or recurring problems, which assists in product development and improves your own customer support.
Finally, when it comes to resolving issues, social media customer service software makes sure that any problems are addressed quickly, either through chatbots (if possible) or by creating tickets for your customer service team to deal with promptly. Because it makes customer service more easily accessible, it creates a better customer experience, and, perhaps most importantly, creates a two-way dialogue online between your company and your customers.
When you use social media customer service software, the net result is that you get a positive dialogue with your customers online.
This not only wins the goodwill of your existing customers but results in other, prospective customers also viewing your company or brand in a more favourable light, thus improving your brand value overall.
This is especially important because the conversations happening with your customers online are public, and every individual interaction can influence how the general public perceives your brand. By using the right tools to take control of the conversations happening about your brand on social media, you’re helping shape a positive public perception of your brand.
Social Media Software Support Features
Besides the main functionality mentioned above (analytics, chatbots, and social scheduling and publishing), there are other key support features offered by most social media customer service software solutions. Most will have one or more of these features and capabilities:
Rapid, real-time customer service responses consolidated into one unified platform.
Notifications and alerts to address spikes in requests and to monitor sensitive or contentious social media situations.
Intelligent AI which is capable of offering personalisation and minimising errors.
A robust suite of analytics capabilities designed to identify your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to improve your social media strategy.
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What to Consider When Choosing Social Media Customer Service Software
When choosing the social media customer service software that is right for your business, you’ll need to consider your company’s specific needs to find the right fit. Volume is likely to be the main consideration! Having an idea of the number of customer queries and mentions that will require addressing on social media will help you understand the service you need.
Whether or not you conduct customer transactions within various time zones around the world is another consideration. If this is the case, you may need software that can offer instant chatbot support to customers outside the time zones of your human customer support agents.
Plus, if you have customers globally, you may also require software that supports multiple languages and can monitor analytics across numerous social media platforms in different countries and language types.
Let’s Talk Pricing
Because social media customer service software is offered as a service, the cost associated is usually priced monthly.
The cost for social media customer service software ranges from:
A free (very limited) entry-level offering to £12/agent/month (USD $17/agent/month)
£70/agent/month (USD $99/agent/month) for a basic offering
Up to £360/agent/month (USD $499/agent/month) for software with more advanced features and capabilities.
Top Social Media Customer Software Products for 2021
The top social media customer service software products identified by marketplace comparison websites include offerings from cost-effective and straightforward basic solutions to those that are more advanced and more highly-priced.
We’ve identified the top social media customer service software products for 2021
- eDesk
eDesk
eDesk is the eCommerce helpdesk that centralizes customer support queries from your webstore, marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy and Cdiscount, and your social channels into one simple dashboard.
eDesk helps you support your customers and protect your reputation on social media by connecting Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to one centralised shared inbox. Customers include Suzuki, HP, PayPal, Carparts.com and Superdry.
eDesk offers pricing from £35 (USD 45) per month and new customers can avail of a free 14-day trial, no credit card needed.
- Conversocial
Conversocial
Conversocial describes itself as “the conversational customer experience platform for messaging.” Indeed, Conversocial is a social customer service software that enables you to engage in large volumes of social media conversations with your customers by supporting social media channels, live chat and text-based communication.
Using intelligent software that can tap into social messaging and voice channels, Conversocial powers conversational customer experiences for customer service and sales and marketing by offering a seamless, integrated solution for AI-driven bots and human agent-based customer engagement.
The cloud-based software combines intelligent prioritisation with team management workflows. It offers social media monitoring, including social listening and sentiment scoring, and provides insights and facilitates collaborative processes through ticket creation.
Conversocial supports English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish languages.
- SproutSocial
Sproutsocial
If your business is set to scale quickly, SproutSocial may be the answer to your social media customer service software needs. SproutSocial offers an all-in-one social management solution that allows customers to maximise their social media strategy by better connecting with audiences and streamlining publishing workflows.
It also offers real-time collaboration and provides meaningful analytics and insights based on available social data, all at scale. It supports English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish languages.
Its ‘standard’ option plan begins at £72 (USD 99) per month, per user and £110 (USD 149) per month, per user for its ‘professional’ option plan.
- Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is built to help you provide excellent customer service by prioritising and managing a high volume of customer support requests across several different channels. It allows you to create a knowledge base over time, analyse and improve the performance of your customer support team through intelligent machine learning.
Zoho Desk’s flexible, cloud-based help desk support software with Contextual AI allows you to provide streamlined, superior customer service support. It supports German, English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified) languages.
Zoho Desk offers a free pricing model for up to three agents; its standard pricing model starts at £9 (USD 12) per agent, per month.
- Sparkcentral
Sparkcentral
Sparkcentral is a cloud-based customer service platform that allows you to design, scale, manage, and optimise customer conversations.
It uses AI, chatbots and supports integrations with chat platforms including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter, in addition to your company’s own website and apps — allowing you to consolidate customer communications through any channel into one place at scale.
- Front
If you’re after a simple, entry-level solution, Front may be just the choice for your business. Front allows you to streamline your customer service support by helping bridge email and apps together in a collaborative customer communication platform. More than 6,000 clients use Front to cultivate personalised customer relationships at scale.
Prices start at £7 (USD 9) per user, per month for the most basic pricing plan.
- Salesforce Digital Engagement
A social media customer service software from CRM leader Salesforce is bound to pack a punch. Indeed, its Digital Engagement software lives up to the heritage of its name, allowing you to engage customers at the right time across any digital channel. That includes mobile messaging, web chat, social networks, and more, to provide a seamless service experience across channels. - Sprinklr
Sprinklr
Sprinklr offers the world’s ‘first unified front office for modern channels.’ It allows you to consolidate 23 social channels, 11 messaging channels and hundreds of forums, blogs, reviews and news sites online into one comprehensive platform to support your company’s marketing, advertising, customer service and engagement initiatives.
Sprinklr uses AI to run its platform and facilitate collaboration to share data and reduce silos across teams within your organisation. The company has 24 offices across 16 countries.
- LiveAgent
LiveAgent allows you to personalise your customer interactions with an all-in-one help desk solution. Its live chat software is a USP, and it boasts the fastest chat widget on the market. In 2020, its live chat software was rated #1 for SMBs.
LiveAgent’s clients include BMW, Yamaha, Huawei and Oxford University. Its pricing includes an entry-level free package with limited support. Higher levels of support progressively add features, with its all-inclusive package pricing at £28 (USD 39) per user, per month.
- Gladly
Gladly
Gladly prides itself on personalised customer service by offering a solution designed with people at its centre. Rather than operating a case-centric solution, Gladly enables lifelong customer conversations across multiple channels, meaning each customer is treated uniquely and case history retained.
Gladly ambitiously aims to deliver exceptional customer experiences, increase contact centre generated revenue by up to 10%, and cut technology costs by up to 40% by moving to an all-in-one customer service solution.
Gladly’s customers include JetBlue, JOANN, and TUMI. A basic free pricing scheme is available, though to get the most out of its features, you’ll want to invest in one of its paid pricing schemes, which range from £27-108 (USD 38-150).
Final Thoughts
Social media customer service or ‘social care’ as it’s often called, is not necessarily a new concept. Yet, many companies still do not integrate social into their multi-channel customer support, and in this day and age, it is a requirement to do so.
Whatever your business’s size, you can benefit from integrating social media into your broader, cross-channel customer service strategy. Offering a seamless customer service solution is more crucial now than ever before when customers are online and talking to and about your brand in real-time.
By providing real-time customer support and seamlessly integrating social media into your cross-channel customer service support strategy you can positively impact sales, increase customer loyalty, and more broadly improve your brand’s perception both online and offline.
social media response examples
In the past, contacting customer support only existed in its most basic forms: calling a hotline number for help or physically going to the company’s store. Nowadays, we find ourselves in a time when asking questions is at our fingertips. The popular approach? Reaching out to brands via their social media channels.
Due to the fast-paced nature of these platforms, a help desk software that can seamlessly integrate into these channels is a “must” for keeping up with your customers. And, to meet your existing and potential customers where they usually are. In fact, a recent study found the average person spends over 2 hours each day on social media platforms.
It’s true – customer service has gone through remarkable transformations, especially on platforms that once were meant only for personal use. And for businesses, understanding how to better connect with customers through social media is a superpower on its own. While it’s challenging to be witty and stay true to your brand voice with limited characters, several big names from different fields are constantly fine-tuning their social strategy for years.
Listed below are seven powerful examples from top brands that can teach us all about providing great social media customer service.
Starbucks
starbucks twitter conversation customer support examplestarbucks twitter conversation customer support example
Most of us see customer service as a one-way ticket to ride. Clients ask questions and support agents answer. While this method works on surface-level, brands who want to stand out from the rest need to deliver that little extra to be perceived as the hero.
By using social media monitoring tools, Starbucks social team were able to view a tweet from a customer who was in dire need of their signature Pink Drink. The brand stepped in and used one of the most powerful tools, empathy, to relate to the customer’s emotions. In return, the client praised the brand for “fueling” their mornings, as they are employed in the busy and hectic healthcare sector.
Here are three ways Starbucks was able to provide top-notch customer service on Twitter:
Monitor mentions. Brands use social media monitoring tools such as Hootsuite to do more than just keep track of customer praises. These platforms also provide valuable insight on how your business is perceived by the public. As illustrated in the tweet, make sure to follow through completely – never leave a customer hanging.
Be proactive and reactive. Take a look at the image above. The customer was not complaining about anything. All they wanted was a beverage from their favorite brand. As a business, it’s not always about fixing a bad customer experience. Sometimes, it’s the complete opposite (amazing, right?) and this is where you get to step in and save the day.
Build and maintain relationships. Brands that have friendly, empathetic customer service are more likely to be recommended than those who engage in unfriendly exchanges with their followers. This is one of the key tools for building customer loyalty.
Comcast
comcast twitter conversation customer support examplecomcast twitter conversation customer support example
The truth is, Comcast is not exactly known for exceptional customer service. Back in 2008, the company went through a rough patch regarding their poor service. They had swept their support department under the rug to increase profits. With no surprise, that move backfired.
One way the brand rose from the ashes was to do a complete 360 on the way they hear out customers and deal with complaints. One thing they do well is giving attention to people that mention them on Twitter. Take this tweet where one client switched from one of Comcast’s competitors, as well as blatantly called them out. The company proceeded to thank them and welcome them into the “family.”
Be personal. Whether you’re a corporation with support teams around the world, or a startup headquartered in your parents’ basement, personalization is essential on social media. Of course, it’s just as important be it an email, live chat or on a call.
Signed at the end of Comcast’s tweet is “Sami.” Not only will it help your internal team know who handled what interaction, it gives customers a sense of the human touch.
Don’t overdo it. You may have heard of the KISS principle in your education days. This age-old acronym stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” Other variations include “keep it short and simple” or “keep it simple and straightforward.”
This rule states that most things work best if they are kept simple, rather than complicated. With Twitter, it’s all about how well you get your message across within its limited character count. While some brands use the GIFs to reply, others use a simple straightforward approach – no sugar coating needed.
Wix
wix twitter conversation customer support examplewix twitter conversation customer support example
Wix, a leading website builder platform with 150 million worldwide, must provide exceptional customer service on social media. As a B2C (business-to-consumer) company, focused on clients creating their own sites from scratch, you can imagine how many questions are received on a daily basis. So much so, they built their own in-house help desk software to support their users the best way possible.
Have a dedicated customer service account. Having a separate channel or Twitter handle serves multiple purposes. First, it creates a division between your main channel which mainly promotes marketing efforts, customer stories, product updates etc. Second, a dedicated customer service page lets you focus on customer complaints under one roof.
Wix opened their own Wix Help Twitter page devoted to answering customer support questions. Remember to add your customer service account to the main account. Chances are customers will look there first.
Guide customers in the right direct. The worst thing you can do is ignore a customer’s question on social media. For example, a customer may ask a specific question regarding your premium plans. Your social media team, or whoever is monitoring the channel, may have no idea how to answer. The important thing is to guide the customer in the right direction. In the tweet above, our team provided a direct email to contact our Billing team for additional support.
Think 24/7. In our digital era, today’s customers expect instant service at any time. In the tweet, the customer was surprised that we work on a Sunday. This is why having a powerful help desk software is a must for improving customer service response times.
Learn how around-the-clock support increased our conversion rate.
Zappos
zappos facebook post customer service examplezappos facebook post customer service example
Zappos is the name of the game when it comes to customer service. They’re so serious about it, it’s in their company’s mission statement. Take a look at their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn “About” sections:
Facebook: We’re here for you 24/7. Post a comment, Tweet, chat, email or Call us at (800) 927-7671! Let Zappos Social Team WOW you!
Twitter: Zappos is our name and service is our game! #Zappos
LinkedIn: We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy. And, we believe that it’s our unique “fun and a little weird” culture that drives the WOW.
Surprise and delight. Mistakes happen for all businesses. It’s what you do to make it right. In the case of our Facebook post example, the customer received the wrong size shoe for her bachelorette party and contacted their support team. Not only did they send her the new size through overnight shipping, they added an additional “wedding survival kit” and personal note from an employee. We’re not saying you have to do this for every customer. But as the results show, going that extra-mile can lead to loyal and satisfied customers.
Use the right tools. Zappos is known for providing speedy support on social media (less than 20 minutes to be exact!). And that’s not to mention their 100% response rate. This is where customer support software plays a vital role in delivering answers fast. Not only does this software sync with your social channels, it creates a seamless, organized flow for you and your support team to manage.
Read my personal Zappos customer experience story.
Southwest Airlines
southwest airlines twitter conversation customer service examplesouthwest airlines twitter conversation customer service example
Remember the last time your flight was delayed? Or you lost your luggage? With airlines, so many things can go wrong when you’re dependent on the weather or travelling for hours at a time. Many flyers turn to airlines’ social media account to vent their frustration, hoping for something in return. In this tweet, the customer was shocked to find there was no WiFi on their 3+ hour flight. To diffuse the situation, Southwest Airlines promised the client they’d soon be able to board a plane with WiFi.
Use the right tone. Some brands roast their followers publicly on social media channels, while others have a more down-to-earth approach. It’s important to note that when dealing with difficult customers, the way you come across in tone and voice can make a problem worse, or better. In the case of Southwest Airlines, each of their social interactions are personal, humble, informative and honest. Every tweet is written as if they were standing face-to-face with you.
Choose the right social media channel for fast solutions. In recent years, travellers have skipped the customer service hotlines and have turned to social media to get their pressing questions answered fast. If you compare a phone call to a tweet, it can actually be more effective, as the brand is able to send links to rebook a flight or send a direct link to collect your mileage points. In fact, according to a study by Conversocial, the average Southwest Airlines response time is six minutes. That’s a whole lot shorter than waiting at the airline counter, or waiting to be connected to a call center agent.
Spotify
spotify customer service twitter example spotify customer service twitter example
Remember when you used to buy cassettes or CDs and listen to them on repeat? Fast-forward to today’s technological era, where we are able to freely stream music online or offline via mobile devices, computers and SmartTVs.
One of the leading brands taking over how we consume music is Spotify. Not only are they good at what they do, their support is music to its customers’ ears. Heck, they even won a Webby Award for social media customer support.
Leverage your product or service on social media. Spotify customers who reach out to their dedicated Twitter handle @SpotifyCares, like in this tweet, will often receive a thematically appropriate song handpicked by their support team. Many brands do not have the opportunity to use their product on another platform, especially social media. As musician Roy Ayers once said: “The true beauty of music is that it connects people.”
Share knowledge. Think about this scenario: A customer asks a specific question on your Twitter account. You don’t know the answer. You then ping 10 colleagues from 5 different teams. The clock is ticking and after 20 minutes you’re still waiting for a final answer.
This is where a knowledge base comes handy. A library filled with up-to-date content about your product or service. In the tweet above, Spotify has created a knowledge base article specifically for the question “Why can’t I find the music I’m looking for?” This is because Spotify, a company that supports millions of users, probably receives this question more than once a day.
Netflix
netflix twitter conversation customer service examplenetflix twitter conversation customer service example
If you think of the word “binge-watching,” Netflix probably jumps to mind. A company drastically changing the way we consume shows and movies. How? Instead of having to wait each week for your favorite TV show, Netflix releases series all at once. It’s the perfect recipe to stay in bed and have your eyes glued to your television.
While Netflix is known for providing affordable streaming prices, great recommendations and an abundance of content for all walks of life, their social media game is also one to watch.
Provide speedy support. There’s an expression that goes “the sooner the better,” and Netflix jumps on any opportunity it can to immediately solve customer issues on social media. Take this tweet, where the user’s problem was solved in less than ten minutes through a straightforward help center article. Fast support doesn’t mean you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat, though. Use smart tools such as a knowledge base or helpful blog articles to help out those users who need it.
Be transparent. No product or service is perfect, even Netflix. In the tweet, the customer was complaining about an error when connecting Netflix to a device. Some companies are embarrassed when problems are public, while others choose to deal with it in the best way possible. If you know you’re experiencing a critical bug that affects your customers, don’t hide it. Create a known issue article, for example, that explains the issue and allows people to be in the loop when it’s fixed. Without transparency, you lose trust.
While these top brand may also have higher budgets to train and build powerful support teams, the real investment to pay attention to is in your social strategy. In the end, social media is customer service. If you’re not actively present, you’ll risk falling behind and losing your clients to your competitors.
Conclusion
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