Common Mistakes To Avoid
Whatever the social channel, there are a few ways to (publicly!) stick your foot in your mouth. Avoid these at all costs!
- Don’t neglect your customers. If you’re going to provide customer service over social media, at minimum, every direct support question should be answered.
- Don’t delete (or hide) comments or posts. The only exception is when comments are clearly spam or in violation of posted community guidelines. Deleting a customer’s negative comment will only further enrage the customer and damage the relationship.
- Don’t be defensive. Remember that the customer, even when angry, reached out to you. Thank them for bringing their issue to your attention, acknowledge their concern, and apologize for the inconvenience.
- Don’t overwhelm your customers with too much information, whether you’re posting articles from a knowledge base or a too-lengthy response.
- Try to focus on only answering their specific question. If the proper answer is a lot to explain or complicated, suggest you move the conversation off of social media.
- Don’t reply or respond to every customer in the event of mass issues or outages. When many customers are affected by a single issue, it’s best to provide only public status updates that will reach everyone.