Customer Care Archives | Sprout Social

15 social listening tools for your brand in 2024

Jacqueline Zote — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:53:06 +0000

An effective social media strategy depends on a deep understanding of your audience. Knowing what topics interest your audience helps you craft content and messages that resonate with them. This is where social listening tools come in, letting you tap into the conversations that your audience is engaging in.

Social media listening tools let you monitor and track social media conversations related to a specific brand or topic. This gives you insights that will inform your marketing decisions.

Let’s break down 15 of the top social listening platforms to consider for your brand.

Best all-in-one social listening tool

Some tools provide deep listening for one specific platform. Meanwhile, some may specialize in certain functions. While one tool gives you an in-depth sentiment analysis, another may be much better at predicting trends.

To get the most out of your social listening efforts, however, you need a tool that does it all.

1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s social listening tools give you a comprehensive look into conversations that are relevant to your brand. Track conversations related to your brand across all major social networks and other online sources. Sprout’s tools automatically sift through millions of data points to uncover insights relevant to your brand.

You can learn about audience preferences and how they feel about specific products, campaigns or topics. This helps you stay on top of the latest industry trends and identify untapped business opportunities. Discover key influencers and thought leaders who are leading the conversation so you know whom to engage.

Brand-specific conversations give you more visibility into customer experiences and brand sentiment. Set up custom alerts to anticipate an upcoming brand crisis, giving you ample time to fix it before it gets out of hand. Plus, with powerful social media management tools built in, you can easily manage these issues all in one place.

Sprout’s AI features further streamline your social listening efforts. Summarizing with AI Assist saves you the trouble of having to read through lengthy messages. It creates a summary of Listening messages with over 800 characters, allowing you to quickly zero in on essential insights.

Meanwhile, Analyze by AI Assist takes the guesswork out of social listening. It automatically analyzes your Listening messages to find the insights that matter. This includes metrics related to words, phrases, emojis and hashtags. So you can easily forecast trends if certain topics see increased engagement.

It even helps you gauge the sentiment behind specific conversations. This simplifies how you anticipate possible brand crises or monitor how people feel about your latest campaigns.

Sprout offers a 30-day free trial so you can test out its publishing and analytics capabilities. The social listening tools are part of a custom-built plan for enterprise users.

General social listening tools

If your brand maintains a presence across a variety of social networks, you need a tool that’s appropriate for all major platforms. Let’s look at the top social listening tools that are suitable for general use.

2. Brandwatch

Brandwatch extracts valuable conversational insights from millions of sources. It analyzes both historical and real-time conversations to identify current trends and how they change over time. This gives you a better understanding of your market and audience, so you know what’s trending and popular. You’ll be able to see the top topics they’re talking about and identify relevant brand mentions.

3. Brand24

Brand24 is a powerful tool for measuring brand awareness and reach. It lets you track conversations from 25 million online sources to gather valuable consumer insights. This gives you a better understanding of what people like or dislike, especially when it comes to your brand. You can even measure brand sentiment and quickly identify reputational risks.

4. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a comprehensive listening tool that specializes in content discovery and research. The platform lets you track trending topics and popular content to inspire you. You can use the monitoring features to track mentions and trends across leading social networks. It lets you set up alerts for brands, topics and keywords to help you stay on top of the latest conversations.

5. Keyhole

Keyhole offers enterprise-grade social listening to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. It provides insights to identify who they are and get a better sense of what they like. You can use the platform to track specific hashtags and keywords as well as identify relevant influencers. The volume predictions feature lets you anticipate when your posts are going viral, allowing you to come up with a game plan.

6. Meltwater

Meltwater helps you cut through the noise and uncover the conversational insights that matter to your brand. It provides you with a full picture by capturing historical data to help you research changes in trends over time. The platform gives you a better understanding of your audience and allows you to analyze their sentiment. This helps you monitor brand mentions in real time and stay on top of upcoming crises to quell them on time.

7. YouScan

YouScan is one of the top social listening tools that comes with image recognition capabilities. It gives you access to AI-powered visual insights to gain a better understanding of your buyer persona. The platform identifies upcoming trends so you can align your marketing strategy accordingly. It tracks brand sentiment and consumer perceptions to show you how people feel about your brand. It even detects possible threats to your brand reputation in real time.

8. HubSpot Social Media Management Software

HubSpot’s social media management software lets you create custom keyword monitoring streams. This makes it easy to surface interactions that could turn critical and manage them on time. You can also set up email alerts, allowing your sales team to follow up when prospects mention specific keywords. It even provides AI-generated recommended actions to speed up your analysis.

Social listening tools for Twitter (X)

X is a place where all the trending conversations take place. It’s where people go when they want to complain about a brand or discuss a trending topic. As such, Twitter listening can uncover valuable insights into your target market.

So let’s take a look at the social media listening tools that specifically focus on X.

9. X advanced search

X’s built-in advanced search tool is highly robust for listening in on relevant conversations. You can track conversations containing specific words, phrases and hashtags. It even lets you narrow your search by excluding certain words.

To get even more specific, look for posts from one specific account to another. The tool gives you plenty of additional filters to help you narrow your search by engagement, date range and so on.

10. X Pro (formerly TweetDeck)

X Pro is a paid tool that offers the same features as the formerly free TweetDeck. Pull up hundreds of conversations across the platform and display them in several columns. This makes it easier to look out for posts around specific topics and news stories as they come in. X Pro even lets you pull up X posts from the dedicated lists you’ve created. This makes it easier to narrow down conversations from accounts that are most interesting to you.

11. Awario

Awario provides real-time insights on specific brand and keyword mentions in any language. This makes it a great social media listening software for brands that want to grow an international customer base. It even helps you identify top influencers and brand advocates leading the conversation.

Awario supports your social selling efforts with a feature that identifies hot leads. It tracks X posts and zeroes in on ones that are looking for a product similar to yours.

Social listening tools for TikTok

TikTok’s reach and influence are rapidly expanding. Now it’s the hub for all the latest social media trends and conversations. So being able to tap into the conversations happening on the platform gives you leverage to stand apart.

Let’s take a look at a couple of TikTok tools to conduct social listening on the platform.

12. Exolyt

Exolyt gives you comprehensive insights into TikTok conversations and trends. You can use the tool to monitor what people are saying about your brand and how they feel about it. It lets you track specific TikTok accounts, hashtags and videos to gather granular insights. Also, discover trending sounds, hashtags, effects and accounts to inform your content strategy.

13. All Ears

All Ears is an AI-powered social listening platform that focuses on voice and video conversations. It analyzes millions of TikTok videos to identify relevant brand or topic mentions. The platform automatically transcribes these mentions, saving you hours of time having to comb through the noise. All Ears also provides relevant metrics like reach, PR value and net sentiment to streamline your listening analytics.

Free social listening tools

If you’re not ready to invest in a paid tool just yet, there are a few free social listening tools that come with basic listening capabilities.

14. Answer the Public

Answer the Public pulls up search volumes and trends for a given topic, brand or product. It gives you a breakdown of the associated search terms. So it shows you what questions people are asking about it and what comparisons they’re making. This gives you a better understanding of their needs and pain points as well as their interests.

15. Google Alerts

Google Alerts is another free option that lets you set up alerts for conversations taking place across the web. Use it to monitor specific keywords and topics or even brand names. The tool lets you filter your results based on sources, language and region. Customize the frequency of alerts and choose to show only the best results.

The benefits of social listening tools

Social media listening software helps you track and analyze millions of social media posts. This makes it easy to narrow down the conversations that matter without hours of manual research. As a result, social media listening tools offer a number of benefits for your brand:

Spot emerging trends

Social listening platforms detect patterns in conversations around specific keywords and hashtags. This helps you see when certain topics are starting to gain traction. So you can get in on trends way ahead of your competitors.

Understand customer interests and pain points

Listening in on social media conversations helps you understand what topics people like to engage with. It also reveals their concerns and complaints to help you zero in on their pain points.

Monitor and manage brand reputation

Social listening tools keep track of every relevant brand mention, even if you’re not tagged. This helps you identify conversations that could harm your brand reputation. Then come up with an appropriate and timely response to mitigate the issue.

Identify sales opportunities

Social listening platforms help you identify conversations that seek a solution you can provide. So you can jump in with a relevant suggestion and turn them into valuable leads.

Listen, learn and grow on social

Social listening tools empower you to learn what makes your audience tick. They give you actionable insights to inform what content you create and how you engage with your audience.

But the challenge lies in finding a social listening platform that meets your unique needs. If you’re looking for a well-rounded tool that does everything, Sprout’s the answer you need. Try it free for 30 days to see if it’s the right match for your brand.

The post 15 social listening tools for your brand in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to balance speed and quality customer service

Aubree Smith — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 16:08:20 +0000

It’s not enough to resolve customer service issues quickly anymore. Businesses need to meet their customers with the personalized service they’re accustomed to from brands across industries and channels. Like how the barista at your neighborhood coffee shop asks you “the usual?” when you walk in the door.

But departmental silos, limited understanding of the value of social customer care and clunky tech stacks hinder businesses from delivering quality customer service. Leaders who don’t invest in solving some of these issues will be leaving money on the table and putting their customers’ loyalty up for grabs.

In this article, you’ll read how AI and automation technologies are transforming the landscape of social customer care. And how brands, like yours, can take advantage of them to build memorable brand experiences and maintain customer loyalty.

What customers expect from your service: quality and speed

In a world where social DMs have become a form of texting in their own right, brands replying quickly to customers is table stakes. This makes speed a critical performance metric in social media customer care.

As modern customer expectations shift heavily toward immediacy and accessibility, so have the number of customers who turn to social media for prompt responses and solutions. According to our 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report, customers across generations—Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers—are using social media for customer care.

It makes sense, then, that one of the ways brands can amp up customer care quickly and effectively is to make social customer care an integral part of their overall customer service.

Yet, consumers want more than just a fast response.

The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ found that even though 69% of customers wanted brands to respond within 24 hours, and 16% within minutes, 63% of consumers said their brand loyalty hinged on the quality of customer service they received on social media.

As social platforms become the preferred channel for inquiries and complaints, brands need to keep up with the speed of social and provide swift, effective solutions. It’s especially critical today, when social customer care has such a huge impact on the entire service experience, influencing customer satisfaction, loyalty and brand reputation.

Luckily, technology is here to help.

AI and automation tools are enabling brands to meet customer expectations without missing a beat like never before. And consumers are welcoming the move. According to a Sprout Q1 2024 Pulse Survey of 2,000 consumers across the US and UK, 75% say they’re comfortable with brands using AI and automated technology to deliver faster customer service on social.

And with social becoming a key place for customers to sound off, care teams deserve all the support they need to scale and meet customers’ high expectations.

Common roadblocks to delivering high-quality customer service

Though 88% of business leaders agree social media is a critical tool in providing customer care and service, several roadblocks prevent teams from accessing the tools and resources they need.

Here’s how social media marketers and care teams describe their greatest challenges to delivering exceptional customer care and experiences.

Too many messages and too much manual work

According to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, 63% of customer care professionals said a high volume of customer care requests is their most prominent obstacle.

As one member of The Arboretum, Sprout’s online community for social professionals, put it, “The most significant challenge I face when managing customer care on social media is the expectation to be available to answer questions 24/7.”

Meeting customers’ high expectations is something all brands are struggling with. Customer care tools can take the pressure off by automating tedious or repetitive tasks and managing cases based on priority, so care agents can act more effectively. Yet, only 30% of marketers feel their brand actively engages with customers on social and has implemented customer service tools and processes. And 71% of business leaders agree that brands don’t have a strong social media strategy for customer service.

Departmental and technological silos

Per the Index, social customer care is a shared function between marketing and customer service teams in 2024. But shared ownership means reimagining your teams’ entire approach to collaboration.

From your tech stack to your internal workflows, brands need to pressure test each stage of the social customer care process to find out where silos are slowing service down, and where there’s too much strain on one team.

For example, social teams are often not equipped to handle complex customer service needs, but they’re often asked to do so anyway.

As one member of The Arboretum described, “A social media manager doesn’t have the resources to resolve every customer complaint. Customers use social more and more for issue resolution, but there’s a solid wall between customer care (which uses traditional communication channels) and social media engagement.”

Others agreed that collaboration between teams at their org is lackluster. “Our team’s inability to provide quick and effective customer care is due to the lack of timely interdepartmental communication,” says one social marketer.

Lack of training and education

Social customer care is a relatively new domain, with most teams struggling to keep up with best practices. These gaps are often the product of social customer care being thought of as an ancillary duty rather than a business-wide priority.

As one member posted in The Arboretum, “There is a lack of recognition that social media ‘counts’ as customer service and care. Engaging with customers and your audience through comments and DMs doesn’t get the same respect or regard that dealing with customers through email, phone or in-person channels often does.”

Brands must ensure their care agents get the social media customer service training they need. This will help them better understand the nuances of providing care on social and delivering brand-friendly customer service across key social networks. In fact, our Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse survey found that 35% of businesses planned to hire additional agents and host additional training to improve the quality of customer interactions on social going forward.

While social customer service teams understand that social customer care is key to resolving issues on channels where customers provide open, honest—and very public—feedback, educating key stakeholders and senior leadership is also necessary to help them see its impact.

Not having the right tools

The lack of investment in customer care processes and tools to actively engage on social is a major hurdle to developing a sophisticated strategy. Disjointed tech stacks and disparate communication channels can make social customer care cumbersome and inefficient.

The Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey revealed many organizations’ most prominent challenges stem from technology breakdowns—48% are left with manual tasks that take up significant time, 41% have gaps in available customer care intel for agents to reference when handling requests and 26% cite a lack of technological resources.

An Arboretum member describes how not having the right tools impedes quality: “Customers appreciate personalized responses that address their specific concerns. However, doing this effectively on social media, where conversations can be disjointed and context may be lost, can be difficult.”

According to the Index, 50% of marketers plan to implement advanced social media management software to streamline workflow efficiency. This suggests leaders are aware that technological investments are crucial to crafting a cohesive customer experience. With social becoming the central hub for social customer care functions—not just for posting and reporting, but for direct customer engagement—brands must invest in social media customer service tools.

How to provide high-quality customer service, fast

What it takes to deliver memorable and positive customer experiences is changing. As customer expectations evolve, so too should the best practices your teams follow and the processes and tools you use.

These are actionable steps to overcome challenges and meet customers where they are.

Use AI and automation for support

Per the Sprout Social Index ™, 81% of marketers said AI positively impacted their work, citing benefits like more time for creativity (78%) and increased efficiency (73%). Another 47% plan to use AI to handle basic customer inquiries in 2024 and beyond.

Thoughtfully using AI for customer service can help brands reallocate care teams’ time so they can handle tasks more efficiently. Plus, AI can help improve direct responses and meet audiences with more authenticity and human connection.

For example, our Enhance by Assist capability helps customer service agents enhance the tone of their responses to match the customers’.

AI and automation also improve customer care workflows. Sprout’s Case Management solution enables your team to automatically create Cases for each social message that needs a reply—and route them to the right team or individual based on custom criteria and rules.

Each team in Sprout has access to a distinct queue, where they can see all incoming messages assigned to them and key details about each Case. Teams can access Cases via a specific pane in the primary navigation menu.

In addition to our Case Management solution, Sprout also has a Smart Inbox, where all incoming messages from across social channels are visible in one single stream. The inbox also includes other tools that empower your team to resolve issues faster, with AI-enhanced agent replies that make replying fast and easy, tags that allow for efficient sorting and filtering and bulk actions to quickly triage messages.

And, Sprout has rules-based chatbots to help expedite customer service for common scenarios, too. Here’s an example of how automated chatbots can be set up to help automate repetitive conversational tasks (like gathering information), resolve customer issues at a faster rate and provide 24/7 service, even when no agents are available.

Personalize the experience

Consumers don’t want to be thought of as one of thousands (or millions) of people who receive the same canned response. They want to be seen as a VIP who deserves an experience that meets their unique needs.

Truly resolving customer issues and personalizing care starts with finding meaningful data. And this requires integrating social with other business intelligence software like your CRM. By having a centralized, 360-degree view of your customers, you’ll increase the quality of service you provide and break down departmental silos.

This data will deliver key insights about your customers, from the first time they sent you a DM to the last time they made a purchase. As our Q3 Pulse Survey data revealed, about 38% of customer care leaders are already looking forward to consolidating agent and customer data to guide business decisions.

Sprout enriches your Salesforce CRM records with social data to provide a comprehensive view that enables your team to engage in real time with the right context. Notice how the sidebar is populated with Salesforce Service Cloud data in this example of an agent responding to a customer via the Smart Inbox.

Similarly, brands can also use Salesforce’s internal AI assistant, Agentforce, to surface data from within Salesforce faster, so customer care agents have a complete view of a customer’s history to provide exceptional care.

Agents can prompt Agentforce to pull up a customer’s case history and quickly see what they’ve reached out about previously, for additional context, and offer thoughtful, personalized support.

Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence Connector takes it a step further by combining social data in an omnichannel view with other marketing data. By harnessing this intel, customer care and marketing leaders can work together to align on the business value of social customer care and elevate it into strategic planning conversations.

Use social data to understand what your customers care about

The best customer care is proactive. Understanding what your customers care about, the common issues they’re having and how they feel about your brand will shape your brand’s care strategy.

According to our Q3, 2023 Pulse Survey, 23% of customer care leaders count an inability to make data-driven decisions among their most pressing challenges, and another 37% are eager to adopt social media management tools that increase the value and business impact of customer care.

By using a solution like Sprout, you can use AI to uncover critical customer insights. Automatically sift through billions of data points to zero in on trends and key learnings you need to guide future strategy. For example, find out how your customers are reacting to your latest product launch through sentiment analysis within our Listening tool. Then, use that data to train your team and inform future product development.

Be an example of high-quality customer service

As the volume of messages and mentions you receive on social rises, so too will customer expectations of your business. To stand out from the competition, invest in the right training, processes and tools to provide quality customer care and propel your business forward.

Audit the tools and processes your organization currently uses to find gaps and redundancies. Build the case for shared ownership of customer care and access to social data, and identify the new skills you and your team need to lead a robust social care strategy.

Dive into this 2024 interactive guide on modern customer service to see the untapped potential of social for customer care and how you can benefit from it.

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‘Tis the season for scrolling: 89% of consumers say social media influences their holiday shopping

Aubree Smith — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:00:35 +0000

As the poem goes: “Consumers scour social media with care, knowing that the holidays will soon be here.” Or something like that.

The most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching, and the influence social has on consumer purchasing behavior is undeniable. According to the Q4 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey*, a staggering 89% of consumers say social media impacts their holiday shopping decisions.

Social has evolved into consumers’ favorite holiday marketing resource: a one-stop destination for discovering gifts, finding the latest deals and seeking customer service. In this article, we’ll uncover key holiday shopping trends on social, like platforms consumers turn to for customer service, the types of content that drives sales and the brands who consistently deliver memorable end-of-year campaigns.

Consumers use social media to discover holiday gifts

Consumer holiday spending is still subtly increasing despite inflation and an uncertain economy. This holiday season, US consumers alone are expected to spend up to $1.59 trillion, an increase of 3% YoY. But the opportunity for ecommerce is growing faster, with sales expected to increase 7-9% YoY, totalling up to $294 billion.

Not engaging your audience on social during the holidays isn’t an option if you want to end the year strong. Using social effectively can help you maintain a prominent presence in customers’ minds by showing up in their discover pages, main feed and on the other side of their searches. Consumers say social media content (including posts from influencers, family and friends, and brands) is their top source of holiday gift inspiration, beating out TV/streaming, physical stores, review sites, and face-to-face recommendations.

The sway of social media over holiday shopping habits can’t be overstated. A significant 42% of shoppers are turning to social to find the perfect gift more this year compared to 2023. This is especially true for younger consumers, as 57% of Gen Z will use social more for gift inspiration. Social networks are indispensable for those in search of fresh ideas and trusted recommendations.

And positive online buzz has premium payoffs. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of consumers would pay more for products that have a favorable reputation on social, be it through user-generated content, influencer nods or viral posts. This figure spikes even higher among younger consumers, with 78% of Gen Z and 70% of Millennials showing a readiness to invest in products that have captured the social spotlight. Harnessing the influence of social can boost sales and justify premium prices.

Customer care and social commerce during the holiday season

This holiday season, 92% of consumers plan to reach out to brands as much or more often for their customer service needs compared to 2023.

Direct messages (DMs) are the most popular form of outreach, with the overwhelming majority of consumers (70%) planning to contact brands this way. Consumers appreciate the privacy and immediacy of DMs, which allow for personalized, efficient resolutions to their issues. However, around a third of consumers will use comments and @-mentions to engage with brands, as they offer transparency and the possibility of public recognition. No matter how your customers reach out, they still expect a response within 24 hours—especially during the busiest time of the year.

When it comes to shopping on social, only about 13% of all consumers buy directly from social networks. This number goes up to 21% among Gen Z. Most consumers go to the brand’s website to hit purchase or learn more. Yet, 32% of all consumers (and 48% of Gen Z) anticipate making more purchases directly from the platforms in 2025, a trend that could start to show up this holiday season and boost online sales.

The most popular social media platforms for customer care and commerce

For their customer care and direct-from-social commerce, consumers turn to Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Facebook: As the social network with the most global monthly users, the platform is also the top destination for customer service. Over half of all consumers (55%) plan to contact brands via Facebook this holiday season. Another 39% of consumers who plan to make purchases directly from social networks in 2025 will buy those products from Facebook Shop.
Instagram: Around 46% of consumers will use Instagram to contact brands for customer service this holiday season. Instagram is the top care platform for younger consumers, with 63% of Gen Z and 55% of Millennials using the platform for service needs. For consumers who plan to buy from social networks next year, 29% of them will use Instagram Shopping, with younger consumers being most likely.
TikTok: Roughly 39% of consumers will use TikTok to reach out to brands during the holidays, which rises to 42% among Gen Z and Millennials. TikTok Shop will also be used by 39% of all users buying directly from the platforms overall (tying with Facebook). It will be the top social commerce shopping destination for Gen Z (54%) and Millennials (47%) in 2025.

What types of brand content drive holiday purchases

While consumers are on the lookout for the perfect gift ideas, certain brand content will stop them mid-scroll. Consumers are most likely to look to influencers for gift inspiration, with 47% saying their endorsements carry the most weight (even compared to recommendations from friends and family on social). Interestingly, Baby Boomers are most likely to say influencers inspire their gift ideas. This is proof that consumers across generations trust influencers’ recommendations, viewing them as especially reliable when they’re overwhelmed with holiday marketing content.

Consumers are most likely to actually hit purchase when an influencer or brand shares a promo code. Promo codes not only attract budget-minded buyers, but also create a sense of urgency and exclusivity that encourages immediate action. Consumers are also likely to be swayed by posts from regular social users (not influencers) or brands showcasing their product or service in action. This speaks to the selling power of both user-generated and original, organic content. Yet, targeted ads and paid influencer content shouldn’t be completely overlooked—especially when the content reaches very specific demographics.

Use holiday shopping trends to set your brand up for a happy new year

As you prepare your holiday campaigns, remember that consumers are increasingly relying on social to discover, connect and buy. By tapping into these key trends—leveraging influencers, creating engaging organic content, and prioritizing quick, responsive customer care—you can enhance your brand’s visibility and strengthen customer loyalty.

This season is a unique opportunity to meet consumers where they scroll, helping them find perfect gifts while reinforcing the value of your brand. Make the most of this time to drive meaningful connections that extend beyond the holidays.

Looking for tips to ensure your support agents are well-equipped to provide the highest quality care on social throughout the holiday season? Check out our social media customer service training deck.

*About the data
All data cited in this article is from a Q4 2024 Pulse Survey of 2,000+ consumers in the US and UK conducted by Glimpse on behalf of Sprout. The survey was conducted online from September 27 to October 1, 2024.

The post ‘Tis the season for scrolling: 89% of consumers say social media influences their holiday shopping appeared first on Sprout Social.

Prepping your social customer care team for the holiday rush with Sprout

Kiran Shahid — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:00:27 +0000

Holiday shoppers no longer line up outside big box stores for the best deals. Instead, they’re turning to social media to find, research and buy gifts. And when their shopping experience falls short, social is where they go to ask questions and share their frustrations.

Sprout Social’s Q4 2024 Pulse Survey shows that this holiday season, 57% of consumers plan to use social media for customer service as often as they did in 2023, with 35% expecting to use it even more. As the peak shopping season approaches, social customer service volumes are set to rise along with holiday demand.

To keep things running smoothly, customer care teams must make the most of all available resources. Luckily, Sprout Social is equipped with tools designed to alleviate the holiday rush while strengthening customer relationships—a gift that keeps on giving well after the holiday season.

‘Tis the season to bolster your customer care strategy. Keep reading to shape your strategy and to find out which Sprout features will set your team and customers up for success during this crucial period of customer service during the holidays.

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Why social needs to be at the center of holiday customer service

Answering customer questions on social sits firmly in the center of the social media and customer care Venn diagram.

Social media is a direct line to your customers. And during the holiday season, their outreach will inevitably increase, further extending social’s crossover into the customer care realm.

Let’s look at three key ways social media must be central to your holiday customer service.

Social is the home of product discovery

“TikTok made me buy it” is more than a catchy phrase. It’s a reflection of the influence social media has on buying behavior—on TikTok and beyond.

Social media is a virtual mall designed for product discovery, social proof and purchasing all in one place—and its popularity is only growing. Nearly half (47%) of all consumers plan to use social more to find holiday gift ideas in 2024.

Influencer recommendations are a top source of inspiration across all age groups—up from a fifth place spot when we last asked consumers in Q4 2023.

This aligns with a broader trend of increasing influencer impact—our 2024 Influencer Marketing Report found that 86% of consumers surveyed make a purchase inspired by an influencer at least once a year.

To stay relevant during the holiday season, customer service must prioritize social media, meeting shoppers at the heart of their gift search. Outfitting your team with the training and customer care social media tools they need boosts customer satisfaction by resolving issues where they’re most active.

Customer outreach on social media will surge during the holiday season

Research shows that brands will experience an uptick in social customer care requests throughout the holidays. Knowing where and how those messages will come in is critical to your seasonal success.

Social users who contact brands on social media overwhelmingly prefer direct messaging. Other popular methods of outreach include posting comments or tagging a company publicly.

Having visibility and access to social is crucial for delivering strong customer service. If customer care teams are only reviewing and responding to email, phone and web form requests, they’re not getting the full picture of holiday-time customer service needs.

Consumers reach out on social during every step of their shopping journey

From inquiring about restocks to posting reviews, customers engage with social media at every stage of their shopping journey.

Social media content sways purchasing decisions for 89% of consumers—promo codes make the biggest impact, followed by content from regular social media users.

And when it comes to contacting brands, consumers do have network preferences. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are the top three platforms consumers expect to use to contact brands during the holiday season. All the more reason your team needs access and, if necessary, training on engaging through these channels.

Remember: A stellar holiday customer service strategy doesn’t just resolve issues—it can turn casual shoppers into loyal customers and enthusiastic advocates. At the same time, a strategy that doesn’t account for social has the power to do the opposite.

8 tips to improve your customer service during the holidays

Holiday-related spikes in support requests can be stressful. But the right process and tools can empower your team to rise to the challenge of providing exceptional holiday-time customer service.

If you want to revisit and revise your team processes before the rush hits, here are eight tips for enhancing your holiday customer service strategy and some ways Sprout can help along the way.

1. Plan ahead

The holidays feel like they start earlier every year. If you’re not planning for the holiday surge—by organizing your team, prepping your media and solidifying influencer partnerships—you’re risking the chaos of last-minute adjustments.

Avoid the scramble of catching up in a busy season. Plan to ensure smooth sailing before the ‘season’s greetings’ decor goes up.

Consider the other milestones your agents should align with—think: key dates for holiday marketing, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales or the last shipping days for guaranteed holiday delivery, that may lead to a spike in messages.

Planning ahead can mean different things to different businesses. For your team, it may mean securing a budget to hire temporary holiday support staff to boost customer satisfaction (which we’ll get to.) Or creating a dedicated DACI model to align on social customer care. Or talking to the merchandising team about peak sale periods to prepare your agents.

2. Create holiday-specific FAQs

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 54% of marketers plan to use customer self-service tools like FAQs to scale social customer care. Add holiday-specific FAQs to your site, chatbots (more on that below) or even post captions so customers can find answers themselves.

No matter how many FAQs you provide, you’ll always get repeat questions. Amazon, for example, uses pre-written answers for repeat questions to save time and help its team stay less stressed during peak holiday times like Prime Day.

Creating one source of truth for these quick responses ensures consistency. For example, using the Sprout Asset Library, you can quickly search for and select pre-written answer templates as you respond to a question on social.

And if you want to limit or expand permissions, you can easily adjust who can access the Asset Library within Sprout.

3. Staff up

No matter how early you prepare for the holiday rush, even the best planning can’t replace the need for extra hands on deck. Consider hiring temp or additional staff. For example, Al’s Sporting Goods hires seasonal customer service staff to handle holiday demand and ensure they maintain service quality.

Speed is key. The quicker your new staff can hit the ground running, the smoother your holiday season will be. Ensure you provide training and tools that make onboarding a breeze. For example, Sprout has earned industry recognition as a platform with high ease of use, setup and admin—crucial elements when you need to get new staff into a tool fast. And with features like Cases and Case Management, you can assign and triage messages so your team can respond to every incoming message, without duplicating efforts or losing meaningful customer context in the process. With robust customer service case management strategies and tools, you can further streamline collaboration even as your team scales.

4. Tackle the highest-priority customer questions

Ensuring the highest-priority messages are sorted and answered quickly is crucial. Think: complex issues, urgent product inquiries, complaints or even valuable positive feedback needing acknowledgment.

Sprout’s Sentiment for Messages capability lets you identify and sort messages based on whether they’re positive, negative or neutral and create separate inboxes based on these sentiments. This empowers you to identify opportunities for proactive engagement—especially important for developing deeper audience connections, like in this conversation with Rare Beauty.

Teams managing a high volume of inbound messages should also consider a sophisticated triaging tool, like Sprout Social’s Case Management solution. Its smart automation capabilities remove the manual effort and monotony from assigning and creating cases, ensuring that your care teams can get to work quickly, provide the right level of care and avoid disruptions.

Inbound message tagging is another way to get the most out of Sprout’s Smart Inbox and Case Management solution. An organized tagging strategy helps you create tailored inbox views, ensuring quicker responses and improving your ability to analyze customer interactions once the holiday rush is over.

Make sure all your customer care agents—seasonal or otherwise—are up to speed on your strategy with thorough documentation. If you’re not tagging messages in Sprout already, here are potential use cases to consider:

Tag by urgency: If your agents are divided by support tiers, tagging messages by urgency can help ensure customers are connected to the right representative quickly.
Tag by customer concern: Understanding trends in customer questions and complaints (e.g., in relation to specific themes or products) can better prepare you for next year’s holiday season. Use the Cross-Network Tag Performance report (which analyzes recurring themes across customer inquiries) to report on questions by internal Tag.
Tag by response need: Some messages aren’t actionable. For example, if someone promotes their own services in your replies, you’re better off ignoring it. Tagging non-actionable messages lets your team focus on important customer interactions and helps you more accurately measure your agents’ time to first-response (TTFR) rates.

Use these tagging strategies individually or in combination to streamline customer service response and reporting efforts. By proactively tagging inbound messages and Cases, your team can provide excellent customer service no matter how many messages you receive this holiday season.

5. Use automation and AI

An impressive 81% of marketers say AI has already had a positive impact on their work, according to the Index. And it’s undoubtedly front-of-mind for teams wanting to ensure customer service efficiency this holiday season. When you can’t get an extra headcount to lessen the burden on your team, there are ways you can use AI as an assistant during busy seasons.

Here are two stand-out areas where automation and AI customer service tools can make a difference:

Faster responses

While consumers still feel torn on how brands should use AI, most agree on one use case: using AI to improve customer service. A Q1 2024 Pulse Survey found that almost 74% of consumers agree they’re comfortable with brands using AI to deliver faster customer service on social. There will always be customer questions that go beyond your prepped FAQ answers. And fresh responses take time.

Sprout’s Enhance by AI Assist, for example, uses generative AI to improve your responses to social comments and DMs–tailoring replies by length or the tone you want to convey, like friendly or professional to ensure responses align with your brand voice.

Lean on chatbots

If you’re not already using chatbots to lighten your team’s load, this is your sign to start. And if you are, this is your sign to update them with holiday FAQs like order deadlines and promotional offers to keep responses accurate and reduce wait times as customer inquiries increase.

To address basic holiday customer service questions faster, we recommend using Sprout’s Bot Builder. Sprout’s Bot Builder lets you easily customize rule-based chatbots to handle a variety of holiday inquiries, from order tracking to shipping deadlines

These rule-based chatbots also manage common questions that come through Meta’s Messenger or X (formerly known as Twitter) Direct Messages.

To start, determine what conversations you want your chatbot to handle. If you need help, Sprout comes equipped with a customer care-specific Bot Template, which you can tailor to handle holiday-specific questions, like return policies or gift card information.

6. Give agents the context they need to succeed

To set your team up for success through the holidays, you must provide them with the right information and tools. This also means giving agents the customer context they need, such as recent interactions and order history, to provide personalized service.

If your team has to juggle multiple tools just to handle a single customer message, you’re slowing down response times and frustrating both your team and your customers. Plus, your team may miss important customer history.

Sprout supports social CRM integrations with tools like Salesforce, eliminating the need to bounce between systems. You can access details from each platform in a single interface, so you can get a better understanding of the customer you’re supporting, the issue at hand and what’s been done so far to help.

For example, Sprout’s Salesforce integration helps you use social data for a world-class, omnichannel care experience. It enables your care teams to meet customers where they are vs. sending them to other channels, like a phone line or email.

And now with Sprout’s social data in Salesforce’s internal AI assistant, Agentforce, care agents have message history accessible in a matter of seconds to speed up case resolution time, personalize responses and enhance customers’ overall experience.

An integrated social support strategy can make a major difference when dealing with a high volume of social messages. Connecting Sprout throughout your tech stack paves the way for more exceptional support experiences for your team and customers.

7. Establish collaboration norms

Creating a frustration-free, collaborative environment can look different for everyone, depending on your company’s needs. Before you design a process, you first need to evaluate existing and potential points of friction to address them proactively.

If you’re new to prioritizing social as a customer care channel, here are some questions to consider:

Who will review responses from seasonal agents and new hires?

Monitoring responses from new agents is time-consuming but necessary at the start of a busy season when quality control is especially important. Establishing a structured message approval process ensures customer interactions meet brand standards, even with new or seasonal agents.

To build an approval process, first identify which agents can be responsible for approving messages. Pair them with newer agents to ensure all replies stay compliant and on brand. As new agents feel more comfortable in their role, they can handle issues without an approver.

Sprout’s Reply Approvals workflow streamlines the process, allowing agents to submit, review and approve responses without interrupting their workflow to boost team efficiency during peak seasons.

You can also create user teams in Sprout to ensure conversations and message comments are fielded to the right people for replies or clarification.

Who should agents go to with questions?

Whether all tough questions go through a single individual or you have point people for specific issues, documenting responsibilities for various topics and ensuring agents know exactly where to direct their questions.

Bonus: Great customer service strategies aren’t built in a vacuum. Use this free social media customer service training deck to align marketing and service teams around a defined set of shared goals.

Get the deck template

To further reduce confusion, use Sprout’s Conversations feature. This centralizes team conversations within the Smart Inbox, so questions can be answered without extra emails or direct messages back and forth.

8. Capture feedback and performance metrics in real-time to constantly improve

To refine your holiday customer service strategy, you must be able to capture real-time feedback and performance metrics to make continuous improvements. Externally, customer feedback surveys are critical to seeing the big picture of how people feel about their service.

Add surveys directly on social platforms like Instagram to capture feedback where customers are most engaged. Using Sprout, it’s easy to configure and implement surveys that measure Customer Satisfaction Score and Net Promoter Score on Instagram, Facebook and X—three major platforms for customer engagement—to gain insight into customer loyalty and satisfaction levels.

Internally, analyzing customer service metrics—like reply time and messages answered—fills in the details behind why customers may feel a certain way about your service by pinpointing bottlenecks.

In Sprout, the Inbox Team Report lets you easily measure team effectiveness and performance—from a bird’s eye view and by individual team members. This report breaks down metrics like median first reply times and unique messages replied to, taking the guesswork out of refining your customer care process so you can head into the holiday season prepared and confident.

‘Tis the season to be efficient: Master your holiday customer service strategy with Sprout Social

A strong holiday customer service strategy has a long-lasting impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty that continues long after decorations have been put away for the season.

The folks on the front line of your brand play a pivotal role in resolving customer concerns and building loyalty that endures. Equipping your team with the right tools ensures they can focus on delivering top-tier service—the kind that drives repeat engagement, clicks and purchases.

Luckily, Sprout can keep your customer care team in good spirits well into the new year. Get started with a free 30-day trial and spread holiday cheer, empowering your team to delight customers all season long with exceptional customer service during the holidays.

The post Prepping your social customer care team for the holiday rush with Sprout appeared first on Sprout Social.

Why brands transition from Social Studio to Sprout Social

Ronnie Gomez — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:24:06 +0000

On the hunt for a Salesforce Social Studio replacement? You’ve come to the right place.

Our global partnership with Salesforce means we’re making it easy for Salesforce customers to manage their full social media presence while maintaining a 360-degree view of their customer.

With Sprout, you get an intuitive, straightforward platform designed to help you deliver exceptional experiences at every touchpoint. Pair that with a commitment to excellent customer service and pre-built integrations with the tools you love, and you’ll see it’s the clear choice.

In this article, we explore the key reasons businesses are opting for Sprout as their go-to Social Studio replacement. Plus, we’re sharing stories from brands that are driving smarter, faster business impact after making the switch to Sprout.

What is Salesforce Social Studio?

Salesforce Social Studio is a social media management and listening tool that provides basic functionalities for businesses to manage their social media presence. Users can schedule and track posts across various platforms, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest.

Source: Salesforce Ben

What does Salesforce Social Studio do?

Social Studio was built through a series of acquisitions and has been offered as a Salesforce Marketing Cloud solution since its launch in 2014. Noteworthy features include:

Publish, where users can draft, publish and promote content to social profiles across Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Youtube and Pinterest. Like Sprout, Social Studio offers social media approval tools that support workflows for approving or rejecting posts before publishing.
Engage, where users can monitor conversations and respond to customer questions, comments and mentions in real time. The Engage interface is organized into columns that provide consolidated social media activity streams based on customizable filtering criteria. If you’re a Sprout customer, you might compare these to Custom Views in the Smart Inbox.
Analyze, which enables users to track their progress toward social media goals through reporting and analytics features, like Sprout’s analytics suite. Social Studio’s listening tool (called Workbenches) is offered as a part of Analyze. Similarly, Sprout’s Social Listening works alongside our analytics tools as a premium solution in our all-in-one platform.

Social Studio replacement success stories

We get it. No one jumps out of bed and thinks, “I can’t wait to implement a brand new tool today!” Identifying and evaluating software options can be a lot of work, but it’s essential to your team’s ongoing success.

When you partner with Sprout, you get access to a team that has successfully migrated over 500 Salesforce Social Studio customers. We know how to dig into the unique complexities of your business, helping you create and implement workflows that support an enhanced 360-degree view of your customer. But don’t just take our word for it. Here are two brands that have accelerated social’s impact on their business by switching to Sprout Social.

Casey’s

Casey’s—a midwestern and southern US staple for gas, food and more—has a diehard fan base both online and off. To meet the needs of their thriving online community, their social team made the switch from using Social Studio to Sprout Social. The results are just as delicious as the snacks they sell in stores.

By using Sprout’s integration with Salesforce Service Cloud, Casey’s team has improved their response time to guests, reducing it by 90%. The integration has provided a centralized way to support customers across social networks, optimizing their experience through intelligent, automated case creation and routing.

For the first time in about five years, our Guest Relations Team reported that they didn’t have a backlog of messages to respond to. Sprout’s Service Cloud integration is a big reason for that.
Jasmine Riedemann
Social Media Manager, Casey's

This increased visibility has fostered a new level of collaboration between Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams. Previously, it took around three days for either team to respond to guests online because it was too difficult to know exactly which messages were being handled and by whom.

With Sprout, Casey’s social and Guest Relations teams increased their communication ten-fold. Now, both teams rely on the real-time capabilities of Sprout Social to ensure they never miss a beat in delivering outstanding customer care.

Hudl

Jessie Koenig, Revenue Systems Administrator at Hudl, is no stranger to complicated tech stack integrations. Luckily, connecting Sprout to Hudl’s Salesforce instance was an easy win.

“[Sprout] was very powerful right out of the box. Many vendors say their products integrate with Salesforce, but it requires an extremely heavy lift from multiple engineers to create a custom integration. Sprout’s integration with Salesforce was quite literally plug-and-play, which is exactly what we were looking for.”

Hudl helps over 200,000 teams across more than 40 sports analyze and refine their game play through video analysis technology. When a question or issue prevents an athlete from being able to make a game-changing move, they reach out to @HudlSupport on X.

“Our customer support team may need to field between 1,000 and 2,000 support requests per day—primarily by phone, email or Twitter,” says Koenig.

My tip for anyone transitioning from Social Studio to Sprout Social is to get ready for some great data coming into Salesforce. Your cases are going to flow through your system much better, too.
Jessie Koenig
Revenue Systems Administrator, Hudl

After transitioning from Salesforce Social Studio to Sprout, the Hudl team was able to use out-of-the-box capabilities and custom tools to streamline workflows and improve customer outcomes. Best of all, their Salesforce CRM system now contains a true 360-degree view of the customer that’s enriched with social data from Sprout.

Why is Sprout the best alternative for Salesforce Social Studio?

Sprout Social is the clear choice for those in search of a Social Studio replacement. We help brands build a single view of the customer through pre-built integrations with the Salesforce solutions that are integral to your business. That includes Service Cloud, Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, Tableau and Slack.

Sprout’s intuitive social media management tools are built on a single code base with enterprise-level security. Our customers rave about its ease of use and time to value. If that’s not enough, here are four more reasons companies choose Sprout as their Social Studio replacement.

Sprout moves at the speed of social

The world of social media is fast-paced, unpredictable and enormous. To stay ahead of the curve, businesses need a social media management tool that prioritizes continuous innovation.

Sprout invests heavily into research and development every year, ensuring customers get constant innovation from our platform.

We’ve built even more power into our platform by combining Sprout’s proprietary machine learning and deep automation capabilities with OpenAI’s GPT model. We’re also leveraging AI through our integration with Salesforce’s Agentforce assistant for Service Cloud. With this integration, Sprout’s social data seamlessly flows into your Service Cloud’s conversational AI assistant, providing care teams with a comprehensive, multi-channel view of their customers, enabling them to resolve cases faster and with more personalization. In addition, our recent acquisition of Repustate adds 15 years of proven success in sentiment and textual analysis. Pair that with smart recommendations from AI Assist and other automation tools, and you get even faster time to value.

Sprout offers a complete social media management toolkit

Maximizing your team’s potential means investing in a platform that can match their speed, agility and skill. With Sprout, they get to work with tools thoughtfully designed to drive business results through social.

Sprout is a social team favorite for a reason. Our intuitive social media management tools have been recognized by G2’s Best Software Awards—which ranks software companies and products based on authentic, timely reviews—for seven consecutive years. In addition to our publishing and analytics solutions, we also offer:

Scalable social listening: Sprout’s AI-powered Social Listening is intuitively designed and backed by robust functionality. On top of that, it doesn’t require manual setup or continuous support—you can hit the ground running with analysis-ready models that fit into your existing workflows.
An integrated employee advocacy solution: Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social empowers employees as brand advocates. With a connected platform designed for immediate adoption, you can amplify brand awareness and mitigate risks without spending more on advertising.
A free 30-day trial: You deserve a chance to try before you buy. Our free month-long trial gives your entire team an opportunity to see what work can be like with Sprout.

Sprout is committed to customer success

Every team has its unique requirements and use cases for social media management software. When things aren’t working, they need support from reps who are just as social-obsessed as they are.

Sprout is all in on social, and all in on our customers’ success. Phone, email, video, self-serve—whatever your preferred medium is, we’re there. Plus, we get there faster. Our phone and chat support wait time is less than three minutes on average.

We also offer tailored onboarding, strategic education and guidance from Premier Success experts and Professional Services consultants. If self-paced learning is more your style, you can earn certifications, browse our learning portal and join our community, the Arboretum, to sharpen your social expertise on your time.

Sprout maintains enterprise-grade security practices

Social media governance is not a “one-and-done” activity. It requires constant risk assessment on behalf of not only your team, but your software vendors as well.

That’s why it’s so important to work with partners committed to conducting the ongoing security measures needed to prevent costly mishaps. At Sprout Social, enterprise-grade security practices are baked into our processes and product, with tools like:

Multi-factor authentication: Use apps like Google Authenticator and others to implement the Time-based One-time Password Algorithm (TOTP) or HMAC-based One-time Password Algorithm (HOTP) for generating passcodes.
Single sign-on (SSO): Leverage SSO authentication service to give employees one set of login credentials to access multiple applications.
Access permissions: Restrict access to profiles, features, actions and other data by applying granular controls to users on their account.
Global publishing pause: Temporarily disable any scheduled or queued messages in times of crisis from our web or mobile applications.

Find your Social Studio replacement

To succeed on the most dynamic channel in marketing, you need a social media management partner that is laser-focused on providing your team with the tools they need.

Sprout is the ideal Social Studio alternative. We’re on a journey to empower companies to create a 360-degree view of their customers through our global Salesforce partnership. Let Sprout be at the forefront of your social strategy, so you can be at the forefront of your industry.

Transform your business with Sprout and Salesforce

The post Why brands transition from Social Studio to Sprout Social appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to master social media for retail in the UK

Sinéad McNamee — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:30:18 +0000

In today’s ever-changing retail landscape, brands are divided into two groups. Those who see social media marketing as a key part of their customer engagement strategy and those who view it as a nice to have.

The importance of social media in UK retail has only grown. The latest data indicates a notable surge in its use. In a 2022 report, it was found that 78% of consumers in the UK have upped their social media usage in the past year. About 65% have made purchases through these platforms. These numbers underline the essential role of social media in today’s consumer habits. And the potential it holds for those retailers who might be hesitant.

Social media is a go-to platform for retail customers.

It’s often the first place a customer will look for information about your business. But it’s also the first place they’ll go to ask questions, get help and offer you feedback. And this is true for every stage of the customer journey.

Social media for retail in the UK: crafting an engaging customer journey

The beauty of social media in retail is its ability to accompany shoppers along the path to purchase. Yet, this presents a challenge—brands must create marketing strategies that are effective across different platforms and resonate with diverse consumer preferences.

To truly harness the potential of social media, retailers should consider adopting the tactics and strategies that leading brands have successfully employed. This guide will show you how to map out an effective customer journey that leverages social media to the hilt.

1. Embrace an omnichannel social presence to support discovery

Larger retailers, don’t rely on one social media platform. While it may seem efficient to concentrate your efforts on one channel, you’re risking potential revenue by not being active where your customers are.

Let’s start with the basics. According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index, the top social media platforms in the UK are Facebook (56%), Instagram (55%) and YouTube (50%). Then there’s TikTok (35%) and Snapchat (31%), two platforms that are increasingly popular amongst UK consumers. British retailers should ensure they have a presence on multiple platforms to reach the most customers.

Here’s how retailers can maximize their presence across these diverse platforms while adhering to each one’s unique best practices and strengths:

Facebook and Instagram: Focus on visually appealing content and interactive features like shoppable posts to drive direct sales.
YouTube: Utilize video content to offer comprehensive product reviews and exclusive peeks behind the scenes of your brand, building transparency and trust.
TikTok: Connect with a diverse and younger audience through distinctive, trend-focused video content that can propel your brand to new heights.
Snapchat: Use this platform for time-sensitive offers and exclusive behind-the-scenes content to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

By strategically leveraging the distinct features of each platform, you can construct a more vibrant and captivating customer journey that’s not just about attracting but retaining buyers. This omnichannel strategy is vital in today’s media landscape, where consumer attention is split across many channels.

2. Enhance marketing campaigns to convert prospects into customers

Social media efforts should be integrated with existing marketing campaigns. This is essential as your social media goals are likely serve the same purpose as your overall marketing goals: to increase brand awareness, engage your community and drive web traffic.

Whenever you’re running a sale, launching a new product or promoting a special offer, you need to let your social media followers know.

Don’t be shy. Promote your products on social media. Research by Deloitte shows that 64% of consumers are influenced by social media posts from brands when making purchasing decisions.

Keep the excitement high by posting discount codes, special offers, and promotions. This sparks those impulse buys. And when you post captivating product photos on Instagram, it’s an invitation, not a hard sell. Creativity is key here—let your products shine in a way that’s engaging and authentic.

Cross-promotion is key. The value of a retailer’s email list is in repeat business. Having a strong social media following will appeal to potential partners and increase your value when approaching them.

A UK brand that has done a great job integrating email marketing with Instagram is Sweaty Betty. The activewear brand is known for delivering customer-centric content that resonates with its audience. Sweaty Betty uses its Instagram account to showcase its latest collections, share fitness tips and tell empowering stories of women embracing an active lifestyle.

Their email marketing is an extension of their social media marketing. It’s consistent, on-brand and, most importantly, engaging. Their emails feature the same type of content they post on Instagram, ranging from workout guides to new product launches and inspirational stories. This ensures that their audience receives the same positive and encouraging message, whether they are checking out the brand on social media or via email.

Sweaty Betty has mastered the art of using Instagram to build a sense of community and email to take that community connection deeper with targeted content and exclusive offers. The result is an ongoing conversation with customers that is both inspirational and squarely within the brand ethos.

3. Gather feedback from your social customers

Navigating the world of social media in the retail sector in 2024 involves much more than just promoting the latest deals and discounts. While it’s true that customers often follow brands to catch a good sale, the real challenge lies in engaging them on a deeper level that transcends mere transactions.

The key to capturing your audience’s attention is to create a strong brand voice and develop a connection. One of the most effective ways to do this is through interactive engagement. Here are a few innovative ways you can connect with your customers:

Interactive Instagram Stories: Get the most out of Instagram by using polls, quizzes, and question stickers. These fun and interactive features can help to keep your followers engaged and provide you with valuable insights into their preferences and opinions.
AI-Powered Chatbots: Implement chatbots on your social media accounts and website. This ensures your brand is always open to collecting feedback and that your customers will always have a quick and easy way to get in touch with your company.
Social Listening Tools: Stay in the know with social listening tools. Monitor online conversations about your brand, products, and industry to discover trends and opportunities for improvement.
The Power of Community: Establish branded Facebook Groups or similar forums to foster a community where customers can connect. These environments are ideal for sharing feedback, generating ideas, and engaging in dialogue, all of which strengthen their loyalty to your brand.

Use these spaces to gather feedback on new products, informing your development strategies. Integrate creative questions in posts to diversify content and engage your audience. Retailers like Wilko excel by asking quirky questions that boost participation and cleverly showcase their products.

4. Enhance retention with proactive social customer service

Consider this: online shoppers are looking for convenience and they’re more likely to stick with a brand that delivers great customer service.

Customer care is now a critical component of social media success. The Sprout Social Index 2021™, UK & Ireland report found that being known for placing customers first is the top quality consumers ascribe to the best brands on social media.

For those in retail, connecting with your customer base on social media means more than just listening. It involves responding with empathy, personalization and in a timely manner. These are the foundational pillars of what today’s consumers have come to value, and they can significantly affect overall customer satisfaction.

As we noted in our Twitter customer service guide, 60% of users expect brands to respond within an hour.

Responding quickly to customer inquiries isn’t just about placating the needy—it’s an opportunity to differentiate your brand and show your level of commitment to customer service. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a response to complaints and negative reviews.

Marks & Spencer is a shining example of effective social customer service. Their consistent interaction with customers, addressing comments and questions on social media, not only resolves queries but also bolsters their reputation as a brand that puts customers first.

Marks & Spencer’s social media customer service doesn’t just resolve queries and complaints but also celebrates customers and their positive experiences. Our data shows that this is the primary reason why customers choose to engage with brands on social. When it comes to social proof, these are the moments to be made.

The more you can spotlight satisfied customers, the better. Notably, poor customer service is one of the main reasons consumers unfollow brands on social media.

So don’t let customer service be an afterthought. By monitoring and employing social listening, you can ensure that no mention of your brand goes unnoticed.

5. Harness social listening to drive product and content innovation

The social media landscape is constantly changing, and so too are the buying habits of the people using it. Brands are always looking for new ways to attract and retain customers, and the market is more competitive than ever, making it essential that brands stay on top of what’s happening in their industry.

Enter 2024, and the need for tools like Sprout’s social listening suite has become more pressing than ever. This platform includes a query builder to help you track mentions, hashtags and keywords that are relevant to your industry. By keeping an eye on what your customers are currently engaging with or concerned about, you can stay ahead of the curve.

Sprout’s advanced listening features help retailers track their brand sentiment and mentions, which are essential for maintaining a healthy level of positive engagement and growth over time.

Social media is a treasure trove of business intelligence. Listening is the key. By listening to your customers on social, you can adapt your product offerings and content strategy to better match their needs and desires, helping to maintain relevance and a competitive edge in a crowded retail market.

6. Leverage user-generated content to highlight brand advocates

User-generated content (UGC) is essential for retail brands on social media, as it helps to showcase products authentically and build a vibrant community.

H&M is just one example of a major retailer that capitalizes on UGC to display its products and, in turn, bolsters community engagement and conversion rates. By offering customers the platform to share their experiences, brands like H&M can effectively harness the enthusiasm of their customer base.

Take British brands like Boots UK and ASOS for example. They’ve been known to cleverly utilize UGC by spearheading campaigns around specific hashtags, encouraging customers to share their product-related stories in beauty or style. Not only does this foster a strong sense of community, but it also significantly boosts the product’s visibility by leveraging authentic, customer-generated content.

When embarking on an influencer marketing journey or seeking to promote UGC, creating a singular hashtag is now best practice. This opens up an added avenue for customer engagement, fostering a more vibrant dialogue between you and your audience.

7. Optimize social shopping for an effortless user experience

Transforming social media platforms into effective sales channels requires more than just posting product links. To truly enhance your social media conversion rates, the shopping experience must be streamlined and user-friendly.

Take the example of In the Style. They have mastered the art of social shopping on their Instagram platform. By selecting “View Shop,” users are directed to a well-organized catalog that not only showcases their products but also provides detailed descriptions and essential information. This integration makes it incredibly easy for customers to browse and make purchases directly from their social media feeds.

Ensuring the transition from browsing to purchasing is as smooth as possible is key. By minimizing the steps and simplifying the process, brands can significantly improve the shopping experience, encouraging more users to make purchases directly through social media platforms.

Ideally, you want to keep your customers moving from Point A to Point B rather than bouncing between a bunch of links and redirects. Even if you don’t use a third-party tool for social shopping, making your social landing pages scrollable and mobile-friendly is a must-do.

Additionally, social platforms are constantly rolling out new shopping and advertising features tailored for social media for retail. For example, the roll-out of Instagram Checkout signals how networks are trying to make it easier for brands to encourage purchases.

8. Inspire long-term loyalty with paid social ads

Of course, we can’t talk about social media for retail without discussing paid ads.

With social algorithms seemingly cracking down on purely promotional organic posts, running ads allows retailers to appeal to customers without running the risk of spamming them.

The good news is that retailers can personalize and target their advertising like never before. Brands can run campaigns to prospect for new customers or reach out to returning customers simultaneously.

For example, brands like PrettyLittleThing and Look Fantastic use Facebook and Instagram’s dynamic ads to reach former customers or they’re looking to reactivate. Such ads serve as a cost-effective way to reintroduce your brand to customers and are likewise noted for their high ROI.

9. Don’t forget your physical packaging

If you’re a retailer, you have a distinct opportunity to make a lasting impression on your customers in person.

This can be done by combining your social presence with your physical packaging if possible. From stickers and business cards to quite literally wrapping up your products with your social handles, there are tons of creative ways to couple social media with in-person promotion.

Even something as simple as a branded business card snuck into your shipped orders is a smart move. Retailers can’t be shy about promoting their social presence and in-person creatives are one of the most meaningful ways to do it.

10. Increase your customer lifetime value over time

The endgame of social media for retail is to nurture customers and encourage them to become long-term shoppers.
In other words, you can’t afford to solely focus on acquisition. Growing your follower count is nice, but ask yourself: is your social presence resulting in long-term engagement and purchases?

If someone is willing to follow your brand, they’ve already signaled their interest to make a purchase. This highlights the need to promote offers while also connecting with a diverse content calendar. As noted by the examples above, retailers have a ton of creative options available for regularly engaging their target audiences.

At the same time, consider how you might enhance the value of your social following over time. Step up your efforts during the festive season when consumer spending peaks. Implement influencer marketing and user-generated content campaigns.

Try your hand at social advertising. And don’t forget to keep an eye on engagement through social analytics. By tracking your growth and engagement metrics, you’ll develop a better understanding of what leads to purchases among your followers over time.

How are you using social media for retail?

There’s no denying that retailers have their hands full in terms of their social presence. But as we said, retailers have the most to gain from social media at large.

From uncovering new customers to increasing the value of the ones you already have, the amount of creative business opportunities available to retail brands on social media is seemingly endless. And with the help of tools such as Sprout Social, brands can run and monitor their campaigns by the numbers to win more customers along the way.

There’s never been a better time to go all-in on your social media to drive more traffic, build a solid community and secure more sales.
Interested in more tips for creating a social-first customer experience? Download this checklist for providing exceptional customer service on Instagram today.

The post How to master social media for retail in the UK appeared first on Sprout Social.

Breaking Ground: Sprout updates to get excited about in Q3 2024

Tim Clarke — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 16:08:04 +0000

The world of social media marketing is in a permanent state of change. One algorithm or another is always in retrograde. The sun rises and falls on emerging networks in a matter of months. One new trend can shift the vibe of an entire industry’s atmosphere.

In a system of very few constants, there is one: For as long as there have been social marketers, there has been a perpetual desire for more time and resources.

Nearly half (48%) of social media marketers feel they sometimes or rarely have enough time to get their work done, according to our Social Media Productivity Report.

This is a challenge Sprout takes to heart, not to mention one that informs our own product roadmap. In our latest installment of Breaking Ground, Sprout’s Q3 2024 Launch Event, we gave a behind-the-scenes look at some of our newest capabilities designed to help social teams work faster and smarter. Because having an impact shouldn’t come at the price of burnout.

Here’s a look at what we covered.

Expedite content creation with Sprout’s partner ecosystem

Social teams’ work is complex and fragmented across not only multiple networks, but multiple martech solutions. Thanks to our robust partner ecosystem, Sprout offers real-time APIs and integrations that connect our platform with some of your favorite tools. Bottom line? Less cumbersome context-switching, faster workflows and easier ways to share social data across your business.

Our Social Media Productivity Report found that content creation is one of social marketers’ most time-consuming tasks each week—it’s also the task customers frequently tell us they’re looking to streamline. With our newest publishing endpoints in our Public API, social teams can instantly send content from project or content management tools to draft posts in Sprout.

In addition to existing integrations Opal and Slate, we are excited to announce a new integration with Optimizely and upcoming integration with Zapier, so you can leverage automation and custom publishing workflows with your tool of choice.

Maximize the power of LinkedIn for your brand

1.5 million pieces of content are shared every minute on LinkedIn. With that level of activity. The platform continues to present brands with new opportunities to connect with job seekers, employees, brand advocates and the media alike.

To make the most of the world’s largest professional network, we’ll be rolling out two LinkedIn releases in the coming months:

Company DMs—one of our community’s most requested features—are coming to the Smart Inbox and cases. Whether it’s fielding questions from job candidates or engaging with potential corporate partners, social and care teams will soon be able to respond without leaving the comfort of Sprout.

Additional Owned Mentions capabilities are also coming to Listening, giving social teams a more complete picture of the conversations happening around your brand.

Exceed customer expectations with timely, personalized care

Though AI continues to be a polarizing topic, nearly 75% of consumers agree they would be comfortable with brands using the technology to deliver faster customer service on social, according to a Sprout Q1 2024 Pulse Survey.

This is good news for brands, given that 80% of consumers say they’re using social more now compared to a year ago to get their service needs addressed. With social becoming a key place for customers to sound off, care teams need tools to help them scale and meet customers’ high expectations.

That’s why we’re adding functionality to help care teams take the headache out of triaging and responding to inbound messages. Case auto-assignment* let managers instantly delegate new cases based on individual agent availability and capacity, balancing workloads across the team. Automated rules for cases* empower teams to customize care processes based on their unique needs. Actions can be set up to trigger based on a range of criteria (including case status, team, assignee or tags). For example, if a message comes in with a certain keyword, you can set a rule for that case to be assigned to a specific agent with the most relevant expertise.

Having a unified platform for social media management and customer care is a top priority for global pizza chain Papa Johns. With Sprout, their team has seen a 50% improvement in average social response rate and saved over 830 hours annually. “Our care team can now quickly address customer inquiries and feedback, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty…Response time has been cut in half since switching over to Sprout,” said Josh Martin, Director, Social Media & Brand Engagement.

And speaking of our robust partner ecosystem: Sprout and Salesforce Service Cloud users will soon be able to tap into the power of Agentforce assistant for service,* giving care agents a complete view of a customer with conversational AI.

For example, an agent with an overflowing inbox can prompt Saleforce’s AI Assistant to pull up a contact’s case history. Agentforce would scan the brand’s Service Cloud data to quickly see what that specific customer has reached out about previously, giving the agent all the context they need to respond thoughtfully and resolve the issue.

Act faster with AI-powered social insights

You didn’t think we’d talk about Breaking Ground without mentioning AI, right?

According to The 2023 State of Social Media Report, 95% of business leaders agree companies must rely more heavily on social media data and insights to inform business decisions outside marketing, but 69% report social data is underutilized. Which is why teams need tools that surface the right data in a fast, accessible way.

Our latest AI-powered updates aim to do just that, cutting the time it takes for marketers to find, interpret and act on social data, including:

Comment Sentiment in Reports—The last few years have proved the inimitable power of the comments section on social. Soon, Premium Analytics customers will be able to track and report on overall comment sentiment across posts, giving teams a clearer sense of what content resonates and how to optimize their strategy accordingly.
Competitive Conversation Breakdown Widget—Level up your social listening strategy with this new widget, which layers sentiment data alongside the top smart categories, keywords, hashtags, mentions and emojis found in your competitive queries. Leveraging this widget in competitive listening topics helps you keep a pulse on conversations happening in and around your industry.
Industry Themes—We’re introducing new ways to accelerate social data analysis with industry-specific Listening Themes. Starting with healthcare and higher education, these pre-built Themes will help marketers instantly visualize and investigate social conversations as they relate to relevant categories (for example, admissions, campus safety and alumni in higher education).

Analyze by AI Assist has been a game changer for how I approach content and campaign analysis … What could previously take me hours of manual effort—such as identifying trends, measuring performance and generating insights—can now be done in minutes.
Erica Bufford
Social Listening and Reporting, Tesco

Last (but far from least), our Generate by AI Assist functionality will soon be in beta. When creative burnout strikes, marketers will be able to ask AI Assist for inspiration by reviewing top-performing posts—no prompt required. Whether you need a volume of posts to support your next campaign or need to beat writer’s block for a one-off caption, you can get a jump start with AI-generated—on brand—copy.

Reclaim control of your calendar

Social moves fast. Social marketers shouldn’t be beholden to processes or technology that slows them down. With the right tools, you can dictate the terms of your to-do list and devote more time to work that delights customers and proves social’s business impact.

Learn more about all of the releases—and more—announced at our Breaking Ground Q3 2024 event.

(*Denotes capabilities available in Advanced Plans.)

The post Breaking Ground: Sprout updates to get excited about in Q3 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

Top customer service case management software in 2024

Kiran Shahid — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 15:00:47 +0000

Customer care is a balancing act. You need operational efficiency—swift case handling, cost control and peak team productivity. At the same time, you can’t sacrifice customer satisfaction since personalized, timely support builds loyalty and drives retention.

Traditional methods and fragmented tools often tip this balance. Bottlenecks, slow responses and customer frustration create manual routing, scattered data and poor visibility into team performance.

The right social media customer service case management software solves these problems by streamlining workflow and centralizing customer information.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what customer service case management is, highlight its benefits, list features to look out for and share five customer service case management software to help you transform your customer service from a headache into a strategic advantage.

What is customer service case management?

Customer service case management handles customer inquiries, issues and requests across multiple channels. It involves:

Tracking customer problems
Routing issues to the right department
Resolving problems through a collaborative process

Imagine a customer posts about a faulty product, emails support, then calls in. With case management, all these touchpoints merge into one case to give your team the full picture to solve the issue fast.

Customer service case management software automates these processes by letting you track, manage and resolve customer interactions from initiation to completion. This allows you to deliver lightning-fast, spot-on customer support.

What’s the difference between case management and CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and case management, while related, play different roles in managing customer interactions. CRMs store comprehensive customer data, track sales processes and manage marketing efforts.

In contrast, case management specifically deals with handling individual customer issues or requests.

While a CRM provides a broad overview of customer relationships, case management offers a detailed, issue-specific approach. These systems also integrate with case management, tapping into CRM data to add context to every support case.

This synergy supercharges personalized, efficient customer service while maintaining a bird’s-eye view of customer relationships

Benefits of using customer service case management software

Effective case management gives your support team a 360-degree view of each customer’s history that enables faster, personalized problem-solving.

Why bother? Customers demand swift, consistent support across all channels. Case management software delivers just that—turning potential headaches into wow moments. Here’s how it helps exactly:

Enhances efficiency

Automate your workflows to simplify support processes. Smart routing zaps inquiries to the right team members to speed up responses. Your support staff is then free to tackle the tough stuff while automation handles the rest.

For example, Grammarly experienced an 80%+ reduction in average time to first response in less than two years after implementing case management software. Automated workflows and smart routing helped with this by instantly directing inquiries to the right team members.

Implement customer service case management software to automate routine tasks and watch your response times plummet while your team tackles the tough stuff.

Enhances productivity

A complete picture of customer information enables support teams to handle more cases in less time.

The Sprout Social Index™ 2023 showed that 54% of marketers plan to use customer self-service tools and resources like FAQs, forms and chatbots to scale social customer care. When integrated with case management systems, these tools eliminate the need to switch between multiple platforms and provide agents with all the relevant information at their fingertips.

Arm your support team with a comprehensive view of customer data and self-service tools to supercharge their productivity and decision-making.

Improves customer service

Case management software enables consistent, personalized support across all channels, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

According to the Index report, 76% of consumers notice and appreciate when companies prioritize customer support.

Social media case management software ensures that whether a customer posts, emails or carrier-pigeons their request, they receive the same support.

This way, omnichannel support capabilities deliver a consistent, personalized experience that customers will notice and appreciate.

Improves operational insights

Customer service case management software provides crucial insights to continually refine your customer support processes.

Through customizable dashboards and real-time alerts, case management tools identify support issues such as delayed response times, misrouted requests and unresolved tickets. Your support team can then use this information to solve complaints faster, improve social media customer service and allocate resources more wisely.

Facilitates scalability

Case management software scales your support operations without compromising service quality or proportionally increasing staff. As businesses grow, case management software lets you easily onboard new team members, integrate additional communication channels and handle increased case volumes.

Choose a case management solution that can grow with your business, allowing you to maintain quality support even as your customer base expands.

Features to look for in customer service case management software

Choosing the right customer service case management software can make or break your customer service. Missing key features? Your team’s efficiency plummets and customer experience suffers.

Before you decide, scrutinize these must-have features to support smooth case handling and happy customers.

Ticketing system

Picture an air traffic control tower for customer issues—that’s your ticketing system. It’s the nerve center of your support operations that ensures no customer query flies under the radar.

Ticketing systems provide a structured approach to handling customer inquiries across multiple channels. Each case gets a unique ID for precise tracking, while smart routing directs cases to the most suitable agents based on expertise, workload and urgency.

Customizable workflows, status updates, service-level agreement (SLA) tracking and escalation systems prevent cases from slipping through the cracks.

The ticketing system enhances team productivity by offering a clear, organized view of all ongoing cases, leading to faster response times and increased customer satisfaction.

Knowledge base

A comprehensive knowledge base is a centralized repository for organizational information, best practices and solutions to common issues.

It’s a goldmine of wisdom specific to your brand. Need accurate, up-to-date info? Your agents can grab it in seconds.

With a robust knowledge base, new agents can transform potential 30-minute calls into 5-minute solutions. To work well, make sure your knowledge base is easy to search and has focused articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides and clear product documentation that speed up social media customer service training. Advanced systems even use AI to suggest relevant articles based on customer queries.

Invest in a well-structured, easily accessible knowledge base to empower your agents, speed up issue resolution and provide consistent, accurate responses across all customer interactions.

Workflows

Efficient workflow management orchestrates your entire support process, cutting manual labor and human errors while freeing agents to tackle high-value tasks.

Advanced workflow features include customizable escalation rules, SLA tracking and conditional branching. AI-automated workflows can categorize and prioritize cases, route them to suitable agents and suggest solutions based on historical data.

For example, when a VIP reports an issue, the system can automatically flag it as high-priority and route it to top agents without human intervention.

Implement a case management system with flexible workflow capabilities to organize your support process, improve team productivity and deliver consistently excellent service.

Reporting and analytics

Robust reporting and analytics transform your support team from firefighters to fire preventers, predicting and solving issues before they escalate.

Comprehensive reporting tools offer customizable dashboards displaying KPIs like average response time, first-contact resolution rate and customer satisfaction scores.

Advanced analytics can predict support volumes and resource needs, while in-depth analysis uncovers hidden customer needs and pain points.

Use these insights to implement targeted improvements to your support processes, products or services. With every tweak and enhancement guided by analytics, you’re not just fixing problems—you’re building trust and loyalty.

5 Customer service case management software

Social platforms aren’t just for memes and selfies. Based on customer service trends, they’re becoming the go-to megaphone for customer concerns, questions and cries for help.

Take it from Zoila Streich, Co-Founder of Independent Fashion Bloggers and former fashion business owner: 70% of her customers slide into her DMs for support.

A case management system ensures you don’t leave any customer unattended by helping you monitor and respond to these inquiries in a timely and organized manner.

These tools integrate with various social media channels so all your customer interactions, social or otherwise, end up in one place. No more platform-hopping. Just faster responses and smoother customer journeys.

Here are five of our top picks:

Sprout Social

Sprout Social’s Case Management simplifies customer care operations and enhances social interactions.

Sprout eliminates manual tasks and swiftly directs cases to the appropriate team members using automated case routing. Custom tags and statuses slice through the chaos and spotlight top-priority messages for rapid response.

Sprout also quantifies customer care efforts. The Case Performance Report measures team effectiveness, while Customer Feedback Requests collect satisfaction data. These tools simplify the process of demonstrating the impact of customer care on the business. Plus, with Enhance by AI Assist, agents can use AI to help adjust the tone and personalize each response. The Smart Inbox offers four stylistic options so every response feels like a one-on-one conversation.

Automate routine tasks, prioritize critical issues and personalize interactions at scale to boost efficiency and build deeper customer relationships.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk, a cloud-based customer service software, helps businesses deliver personalized support across multiple channels.

This all-in-one solution manages customer cases from first contact to final resolution, flexing to fit diverse business needs and structures.

Its collaborative ticketing system fosters teamwork, while SLA management sets and tracks performance benchmarks, boosting agent effectiveness.

Freshdesk’s Freddy AI automates routine tasks while offering smart suggestions to agents. This AI customer service feature simplifies workflows and reduces response times. Plus, Custom Objects integration puts operation-specific data at your fingertips within the support interface.

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses streamline their support operations and enhance the overall customer experience. It enables seamless handling of customer inquiries, guiding them through assessment, planning and resolution.

Zoho Desk’s low-code platform allows quick customization of case management applications to fit specific business needs.

Key features include process automation, compliance tracking and time management tools, all integrated to boost operational efficiency. Zoho Desk also integrates with existing systems and offers streamlined communication tools to create a cohesive support ecosystem.

Zoho Desk balances automated workflows with human decision-making, empowering organizations to meet business objectives while staying agile.

Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud’s case management solution aims to enhance both agent efficiency and customer satisfaction through knowledge-centric capabilities.

It empowers agents and customers alike to find answers to common questions, expediting case resolution and promoting self-service. By recommending relevant articles within the agent console or Help Center, it reduces agent workload and ensures consistent, accurate responses.

Sprout integrates with Salesforce Service Cloud, providing a unified solution for social media and customer relationship management.

Available on all Sprout plans, this integration lets you create, manage and route Salesforce contacts, leads and cases directly within Sprout. It enables support and sales teams to efficiently handle social media customers without switching platforms.

By combining Salesforce Service Cloud’s robust case management with Sprout Social’s social media expertise, businesses can respond faster and provide more tailored customer service across multiple channels.

HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub speeds up customer interactions and support. It’s part of HubSpot’s CRM platform, which also includes marketing, sales, operations and content management tools.

Key capabilities include: AI-powered help desk ticketing, self-service knowledge base and omnichannel messaging. It enables proactive customer success management through health scores, product usage insights and feedback collection tools.

HubSpot’s Smart CRM integration offers a complete customer view, while analytics and automation streamline operations with actionable metrics like customer satisfaction scores, average response times and ticket resolution rates. With this approach, customers will receive scalable, personalized support, which boosts customer retention and increases repeat purchases.

Get started with customer service case management software

Case management is the linchpin for converting your support function from a cost center into a growth engine. Consider features like omnichannel support, automation, self-service options, reporting and analytics and integration capabilities when choosing software.

Want to improve case management further? Implement a tiered customer service model that aligns support levels with customer value and needs.

Explore our in-depth guide on customer service tiers to build a scalable, world-class support strategy that drives customer retention and boosts revenue.

The post Top customer service case management software in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

How to master the art of customer service case management for social media

Ronnie Gomez — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 14:03:46 +0000

Behind every seemingly effortless ticket resolution is a pressure-tested customer service case management strategy that allows teams to streamline efforts and improve outcomes. It’s more than just a framework—it’s the backbone of delivering a seamless customer experience.

That’s what makes your case management systems and processes so important. Connected tools and thorough documentation ensure that every channel—from phone support to social media customer service—delivers the quality your customers expect.

Don’t let outdated case management practices cost your brand the loyalty of hard-earned fans. In this article, we uncover the customer service case management best practices that can turn every care interaction into a competitive advantage.

What is customer service case management?

Customer service case management is the process of tracking and resolving customer issues efficiently across all support channels, ensuring that every interaction is handled smoothly and consistently.

A strong case management strategy defines more than just how your team approaches case creation, assignment and tracking. It also covers valuable post-resolution analysis that supports continuous improvement.

All together, these efforts enhance customer satisfaction by making sure customers get timely resolutions that meet—and exceed—their expectations.

How case management improves your customer service strategy

Maintaining a forward-thinking approach to customer service case management does more than just improve outcomes for your team. It sets the foundation for lasting customer relationships that support stronger business outcomes. After all, a rising tide lifts all ships.

Picture the first businesses that replaced manual case tracking spreadsheets with centralized, automated systems. Their customers were likely wowed by the speed, efficiency‌ and accuracy of every interaction. These seamless experiences built trust and reliability into the very fabric of their brand.

Continuously innovating on your case management approach improves your customer service strategy by:

Streamlining internal operations with efficient workflows that allow team members to solve problems quickly and autonomously.
Facilitating proper escalation management processes that ensure priority issues get routed to the right person without any back and forth.
Identifying data-backed opportunities for continuous improvement by monitoring of customer engagement metrics.

Using case management for social customer service

Social is the next frontier of customer service innovation. Its public nature and users’ growing demand for speedy, helpful responses make it a demanding channel. But for businesses that get it right, the reward is clear: a chance to outshine the competition and build unmatched customer loyalty.

The first step to providing game-changing customer care on social media is implementing the right tools to get the job done. As your brand grows, so does its volume of social interactions. Social media customer service tools—like Sprout Social—are designed to scale with your needs, handling increased workloads seamlessly.

Sprout makes sense of overcrowded inboxes with our Case Management solution. Our smart automation capabilities remove the manual effort and monotony from assigning and creating cases, ensuring that your care teams can get to work quickly, provide the right level of care and avoid disruptions.

5 must-know customer service case management best practices

A great customer service case management strategy equips your team to manage cases seamlessly across all channels. The less time they spend searching for documentation and switching platforms, the more time they can dedicate to creating stellar customer experiences.

The following best practices will help you take your case management approach to the next level.

1. Centralize customer interactions

In a perfect world, all of your customers would submit support requests through a single, preferred channel, allowing you to access their account history easily. In the real world, that’s not happening.

Each customer has their own preferred method of support. Some may want a hotline to call, whereas others are fine with a DM or a self-service tool. It’s your job to ensure they get the same consistency, speed and care no matter their preferred channel.

Centralizing customer interactions with integrated case management tools consolidates customer data so all of your agents work from the same source of truth.

For example, Sprout Social’s Case Management solution centralizes billions of social conversations across major social networks and review sites, so you can efficiently manage inquiries at scale. For further efficiency, you can even set up smart automation that routes cases based on agent availability and capacity.

2. Categorize and prioritize cases

Prioritization creates order, and in customer service, order is everything.

Categorizing and prioritizing inbound messages automatically ensures the most critical issues are addressed first, improving customer satisfaction and preventing potential escalations. By focusing on the urgency and impact of each case, teams can allocate resources more effectively.

Establishing customer service tiers will help you create structure around your customer service case management approach. Cases are routed based on their complexity, urgency and the level of expertise required to solve them. This lets teams allocate resources more efficiently, resulting in faster resolutions.

3. Keep your documentation up to date

Keeping customer service case management documentation up to date directly impacts your ability to deliver consistent, efficient and high-quality customer support. It’s the only sure-fire way to ensure everyone on your team is aligned and following the same procedures—from long-term employees to new hires.

These efforts also boost efficiency and make sure agents have the resources they need, when they need them. Up-to-date documentation reduces the time spent hunting down answers in knowledge bases or from other team members. All that time can be poured back into resolving cases and creating better customer experiences.

4. Measure the success of your customer service case management efforts

If you want to continuously iterate on your customer service case management efforts, you need to measure them.

Data-driven insights are crucial for identifying trends, measuring performance‌ and improving processes. By regularly analyzing case data, teams can spot patterns, uncover root causes of recurring issues‌ and make informed decisions that enhance overall service quality.

Tracking case data starts with using tools that track productivity to showcase the impact your team has on customer experiences. Automating data collection ensures you can keep up with the vast amount of benchmarks that impact your care strategy. Sprout’s Case Management Report evaluates the quality and efficiency of customer care by analyzing key metrics like case volume, handle time‌ and response time.

Segmenting this data by time periods, issue types‌ and individual agents can reveal key opportunities to optimize your care strategy, allowing you to focus on refining your approach rather than spending time on manual data collection.

5. Commit to continuous innovation

What it takes to make memorable customer experiences is changing. Emerging technologies allow businesses to innovate in new ways that surprise and delight. But eventually, everything that was a surprise and delight becomes a consumer expectation.

It’s not enough to simply maintain best practices. To make customer service a true competitive differentiator, you need to stay on top of the innovations that are shaping the future of customer care.

Forward-thinking customer care leaders are increasingly us ing AI to scale their efforts without overwhelming agents. Aspect-based sentiment analysis helps customer care agents spot common themes in customer complaints and queries, so they can tackle issues more effectively. Predictive analytics then takes it a step further, helping agents anticipate what customers might need next, so they can provide more proactive and personalized service.

These AI advancements are transforming customer service today. Imagine the potential impact they’ll have on your strategy tomorrow.

Make your customer service case management strategy a competitive differentiator

In today’s market, customer loyalty is fickle. The brands that commit to providing the best possible experiences will earn more market share and ultimately, more revenue. The time to reimagine your case management approach is now.

If you’re ready to elevate your approach to case management, check out our top five list of customer service case management software tools. These platforms are guaranteed to help you keep your strategy on the cutting edge of consumer expectations.

The post How to master the art of customer service case management for social media appeared first on Sprout Social.

What is digital customer service?: A complete guide

Brent Barnhart — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 16:40:51 +0000

Strong digital customer service is an expectation, not an exception to the rule.

Because the days of customers sitting on hold or reps saying “I don’t know” are long gone.

Modern buyers expect customer care that’s swift, comprehensive and seamless. They likewise expect brands to deliver all of the above through digital customer service.

This can be a tall order for brands with limited personnel. However, with the right tools and strategy, brands of all sizes can use digital channels to offer quality care.

Below we explain how to build a meaningful digital customer service strategy from A to Z.

What is digital customer service?

Digital customer service is the act of supporting customers through online platforms. These include channels such as social media, email, forums and live chat. Effective digital customer service combines technology with human interactions to deliver timely, personalized support.

Through digital channels, brands can resolve issues and build connections faster to increase customer satisfaction. More support channels mean more flexibility for customers to choose their preferred method of support, all on their own terms.

Digital customer service empowers brands to be in multiple places at once. Of course, doing so effectively is a balancing act that requires the right tools and prioritizing the proper channels.

The advantages of digital customer service for your brand

The concept of digital customer service might not be breaking news.

However, many companies are still catching up with customer service technology and trends.

Especially with the boom of AI and more customer interactions happening across social media platforms. Despite these challenges, brands can’t afford to fall behind with customer care.

Below we dig into the value of having a comprehensive digital customer service strategy.

Retain more customers and increase loyalty

Recent research on modern customer service highlights how speedy and comprehensive care translates into retention and loyalty.

Food for thought: 63% of consumers agree that the quality of social customer support significantly influences their loyalty to a brand they provide.

Translation? Stepping up your customer service goes hand-in-hand with doing better business.

Address more customer concerns without having to wait

The longer a customer’s concern goes unanswered, the more potential for tension and conflict.

Through digital customer service, brands can offer multiple channels to get answers on their terms. This includes opportunities for instant answers without having to wait for a rep to respond.

Think about it. Some people prefer customer service chatbots versus one-on-one interactions. Other customers or concerns require personalized care from reps in real-time.

And hey, that’s okay! The beauty of digital customer service is that it’s not a matter of either-or.

Take tedious tasks off of your service team’s plates

Anything you can do to make life easier for your service reps or support team is a plus.

Thankfully, the latest wave of AI customer service options has made automation more accessible for teams to streamline tasks that’d otherwise require manual data entry or reporting.

The result? Reps are more available to respond to high-priority and timely concerns. This highlights how digital customer service is a benefit for both your team and your customers.

Build your brand’s reputation with stronger customer care

Some brands (think: Chewy) have made five-star customer service their trademark.

Consider how positive interactions with customers serve as great marketing for your business.

Source: Twitter

Frequent shout-outs, social mentions and compliments from customers are brilliant for building word-of-mouth. Not to mention that they prove your digital customer service strategy is working.

Learn more about your customers to provide better service long-term

This is a big one. Customer service done digitally is so much easier to document than face-to-face interactions or conversations that happen offline.

For example, you can learn more about your customers’ challenges or assess your company’s response time with confidence if you track everything digitally. That means you can benchmark your success team’s performance and understand opportunities to optimize with confidence.

Proven methods for a digital customer service strategy

Simply put, you can’t afford to “wing it” with your customer service strategy.

Here are the best practices for digital customer service regardless of your business or industry.

1. Offer multichannel support

First things first: you need to provide support across multiple channels for speed and flexibility.

For example, check out how this brand provides their site visitors with a mix of options to get help and answers. This includes:

Instant support via chatbots and an FAQ resource
Real-time support from live chat or phone
Additional personalized support via email or text messages

Source

As noted earlier, no two customers are the same in terms of their needs and expectations. Some want to talk to reps. Others would rather stick to self-service options. Rather than forcing customers to choose, it’s safer to provide multiple options (granted, you have to have the bandwidth to monitor them).

2. Actively collect data to inform your customer service strategy

Every digital customer service interaction is an opportunity to fine-tune your agents’ approach.

This includes challenging customers, successful resolutions and everything in between.

Learning where you’re winning and where there’s room for improvement boils down to data. Ideally, your tech stack allows you to track customer service metrics such as:

Average first reply time
Average wait time
Customer abandonment rate
Total message and response volume
Reply or response rate
Resolution rate

Coupled with sentiment analysis (Think: Tracking phrases from customer calls or common phrases you can also uncover):

How customers feel about your brand versus competitors
Common challenges and pain points
What customers like best about your service

Tracking all of the above can help you create benchmarks and undercover opportunities to improve your digital customer service strategy long-term.

3. Always provide a “human” service option

Like we said, providing quality customer service is a balancing act.

Finding the perfect balance between speed and personalization can be tricky. It’s tempting to automate as much as you can for convenience and speed.

However, relying too much on bots and knowledge bases can lead to negative or frustrating experiences for customers. Especially those that simply want to talk to a real person.

Check out how Dell offers multichannel digital service options, including multiple opportunities to speak to an agent.

Of course, not every little concern demands a live response. That’s why establishing customer service tiers is a crucial piece of building your digital strategy.

4. Consider collaborative spaces to address customer concerns

Food for thought: If one customer has a concern, chances are many others have (or will!) the same issue. This is particularly true for SaaS brands and software companies.

That’s why it’s a smart move to establish forums or communities to address service questions publicly.

Some brands have community forums where users assist each other with their website issues. Most of the content is totally community-driven but employees can step in to resolve problems if needed as well.

These collaborative spaces can serve as an ongoing resource you can point others to in the future. This approach reduces one-on-one interactions with reps while also serving to build out your knowledge base over time with help from your own audience.

5. Put names and faces to your agents if possible

Despite popular belief, digital customer service doesn’t have to be robotic. Quite the opposite!

Piggybacking on some of the best practices above, it’s important not to lose the human element of service when you double down on digital channels. Here are some examples of how:

Include actual agent avatars and names within your chatbot routing
Assign employees to respond to customer questions and concerns in public spaces
Have agents “sign” their social customer service responses

Note how Salesforce has its own “Sales Leaders” within its company’s support forum. This is a subtle yet significant way to make your digital service strategy feel more human.

6. Give your reps a source of truth for customer care

The more you know about a customer, the more personalized service you can provide.

Consistent and comprehensive care means tracking the customer journey from A to Z. With the help of a CRM or a tool like Sprout Social’s Smart Inbox, you can see how a customer has interacted with your brand in the past which can clue you in on how to better help them in the future.

This is a must-do when managing social customer care among larger teams. Chances are your customers aren’t always going to interact with the same person day in and day out. This is why it’s crucial to make sure every rep is empowered to help customers regardless of their history.

7. Close the loop on customer feedback

This is where it all comes together. With a closed-loop feedback system, you’re continuously improving your customer service. In digital customer service, this can be applied by:

Collecting feedback via social media, chatbots or surveys
Analyzing feedback to identify positive trends or customer challenges
Implementing changes like improving website navigation or training agents on new issues
Communicating actions taken to the customer to show their feedback was valued
Measuring the impact of changes to refine your strategy in the future

This helps you hold your company accountable for not only tracking interactions but actually implementing the feedback you’ve received.

Digital customer service examples

To wrap things up, let’s look at some actual examples to inspire your own digital customer service strategy. These examples highlight how different approaches can result in positive outcomes.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social has firsthand experience in improving social customer service.

For example, the support team learned that agents could focus on more high-priority issues instead of responding to small events like new follower notifications.

Using the Smart Inbox capability, Sprout was seamlessly able to monitor and optimize its own customer care activities across multiple social channels. The ability for agents to set rules and track notifications for relevant social comments resulted in speedy replies and delighted responses from customers. All without requiring a ton of training for agents.

Fitbit

Fitbit’s multichannel service options are a great example of how companies can cover their bases when it comes to customer care. The company’s Help Center provides various contact options for customers having issues and even notes which ones aren’t available at any given moment.

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Coupled with a comprehensive help forumwhere customers can track common issues, the brand has structured its help content so that people can get relevant answers ASAP.

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Reverb

Automation is among the biggest customer service trends but it’s anything but a buzzword.

Reverb’s chatbot and knowledge base show how to streamline digital customer service by routing people to quick answers and comprehensive content at the same time.

The company’s chatbot “Trem” provides a list of resources based on common issues broken down by subqueries in the company’s Help Center. Note the “Quick answer” at the top of each query. The company also provides prompts to talk to a real-life rep if needed.

Reverb highlights how your digital customer service strategy and content can align with each other. Chatbots can integrate with your existing knowledge base but seamlessly move customers to an actual rep if their situation requires it. This means the best of both worlds for customers.

Taking your digital customer care to the next level

Offering digital service to your customers isn’t a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “How much?”

The more channels you cover and monitor, the more you can learn and improve your level of care over time. This applies to current customers, future site visitors and your followers on social media.

And speaking of!

Social media is integral to modern digital customer service, especially given how much time people spend on TikTok, Instagram and X. Check out our guide on social media customer service for actionable ways to maximize touchpoints and provide top-tier service to your brand’s community.

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