5 Ways to Sustain High-Quality Social Care

Just five years ago, social support was barely a consideration and now 54 percent of customers prefer it over phone or email. 5 ways to sustain high-quality social care: 1. Share performance data with your agents Make success a team effort: share performance data with your agents and include them in brainstorming fixes. What about average handling times, or CSAT? For instance, agents might note that CSAT survey response rates are low because of the time lag from sending the follow-up message. Use data to solicit agent ideas and turn your social care system into a self-sustaining feedback loop. Use bots to help scale social Because the barrier to contact on social media is lower than legacy channels, companies can see a spike in ticket volume without a corresponding increase in actual issues. Promote from within While hiring from within is not always an option, it should be your preference. Revamp your social care playbook Continued learning is key for customer service agents. Everything is an opportunity to improve While a post-honeymoon phase downtick in CSAT or FRT can at first seem demoralizing, don’t despair.

Author: Harry Rollason / Source: Business 2 Community

So, you’ve developed your company’s first dedicated social customer service team—congrats! Now how do you keep it going?

As with all things new, the honeymoon phase will end and you’ll need a robust process to keep it all together. Teams grow, channels change, and best practices—like consumer expectations—evolve faster than ever. Just five years ago, social support was barely a consideration and now 54 percent of customers prefer it over phone or email. And only over the past two years have messaging apps risen to support prominence.

Here are a few ways to keep your support fresh and maintain your current momentum.

5 ways to sustain high-quality social care:

1. Share performance data with your agents

Make success a team effort: share performance data with your agents and include them in brainstorming fixes. For example, if first response times (FRT) are high, examine when those spikes occur. Can you staff to accommodate them? What about average handling times, or CSAT? Do your agents have ideas?

Remember that your agents live on the front lines and may have unique insights that you do not. For instance, agents might note that CSAT survey response rates are low because of the time lag from sending the follow-up message. Or they might notice that adding their initials to tweets improves NPS because customers immediately warm up when they realize they’re dealing with a human. Use data to solicit agent ideas and turn your social care system into a self-sustaining feedback loop.