Figuring out how to effectively utilize social media within your business can be a tricky task. On the one hand, it’s critical for marketing. On the other, it can be a major time suck. You’ll have to walk a fine line of utilizing the main players like Facebook and Instagram, alongside other lesser-known social-related platforms to evolve your business and increase communication and productivity amongst employees and clients. We’re not going to spend time in this blog giving you a large how-to of using each of these platforms, but we will get you started down the right path with the correct technology.
Customer Service
While nothing can replace a human voice, sometimes, utilizing social technology can massively improve your customer service. Start with simple tools like the Facebook Messenger autoresponder. Whenever someone messages you on Facebook, they immediately receive a response acknowledging their message in addition to expectations for further interaction. This allows you to be continually responsive without constantly sitting on Facebook.
If you’re ready to take it a step further, consider specific customer service profiles on Facebook and Twitter. You’ll need to be able to clearly track customers’ complaints and rants, but quickly showing up in response on these social profiles will make a big difference. Check out how these companies do Twitter support very well.
Finally, consider a chat mechanism on your website. A whole generation of customers is rising that much prefers chatting online to getting on the phone. You don’t have to constantly manage this service. You can either set office hours or outsource to a third party to start and triage conversations.
Utilizing these techniques, your office manager and customer service team can get off the phone and answer questions through a social platform while they are working on other items creating greater efficiency.
Communication
Communication between employees can also be enhanced with social platforms. For example, Microsoft Office 365 offers Teams, a software for messaging, video conferencing, calls, and screen sharing. Instead of walking all the way to someone’s office or trying to multitask while waiting for answers, you can type in a name and send a message to anyone in the company. It cuts time in half; you get quick on the spot response or support. When employees are working remotely, they can still communicate effectively with anyone in the office utilizing a screen share and video to make their message clear. Something like this will also allow you to eliminate other video conferencing software for a more complete, all-in-one solution saving time, training, and money. Your IT company can point you in the right direction when it comes to implementing a software like this.
Morale
Finally, social media, social tools, and social platforms are all shown to increase morale within a business. They are allowing employees to streamline their jobs without the stress and hassle of attempting to collaborate with different people via email or an office visit. It also shows them that you trust them to use these things on work time and not abuse the privilege. Taking a small break to check Facebook or network with a client makes a surprising difference in the workplace. Do some research and find out what would work best for your business.
