http://ow.ly/f4z9a, Leverage your customers to deliver better customer service at a lower cost! Social support allows you to leverage your customers to deliver excellent, fast support at a lower cost. But many businesses are still unsure of the online social norms, rules, and tools available to help them to succeed. Download this eBook to learn the 10 best practices of successful social support and you too can reduce support tickets by as much as 75%.

1. 10 BEST
PRACTICES
FOR SOCIAL SUPPORT
a publication of

2. INTRODUCTION
As social media has evolved into a pervasive way of doing business across multiple
departments, a growing number of companies are starting to realize that they have to be
Contents
where their customers are in order to deliver great support. This means maintaining an
active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc, as well as having their own customer INTRODUCTION.............................................1
community dedicated to supporting their customers.
1 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING........ 2
No matter where you’re meeting your customers to hear feedback, answer questions,
2 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS........................ 3
and address issues, there are some best practices that will help steer you and your
social media and support team in the right direction. Keep reading to learn how you can 3 BUY YOURSELF TIME. .............................. 4
maximize your effectiveness and leverage the collaborative nature of social to deliver 4 IMPORT SOCIAL MENTIONS
great customer service at a lower cost. INTO YOUR COMMUNITY......................... 5
5 IDENTIFY ADVOCATES
AND CHAMPIONS....................................... 6
6 HAVE A PLAN FOR ESCALATION............ 7
7 TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL................. 8
8 BUILD LOTS OF ENTRY POINTS ........... 9
9 ANALYZE, ANALYZE, ANALYZE......... 10
10 LET YOUR PERSONALITY SHINE!....... 11
CONCLUSION........................................... 12
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 1

3. 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
This may seem like an obvious one, but you can’t provide good social support if you’re not
really aware of the issues. Sometimes your customers will come to your official support
channels or social presences, but often they’ll just be in the great big world of social—on
Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, and yes, your customer community—talking about your
brand. If you’re not there to hear what they’re saying, you’re missing invaluable insight into
pain points. Don’t forget to do keyword
The good news for your company is that there are a number of listening tools out there searches for your company,
that will help you get the pulse of your market, no matter what your budget or company product names, as well
size. Don’t forget to do keyword searches for your company, product names, as well as as common misspellings,
common misspellings, so you’re hearing what is being said about you, not just to you. so you’re hearing what
From socialmention and Google Alerts, which are free and easy to set up, to Radian6,
is being said about
which is costly but robust, to HootSuite, which is a nice, middle-of-the-road alternative,
you, not just to you.
there is a solution that will meet your budget and needs.
Listening is an essential first step in providing great social support. As an added bonus,
it also can be a great way to pick up on customer advocates who are giving you praise
in social networks, which can be repurposed for marketing content and internal mood
boosting.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 2

4. 2 MANAGE EXPECTATIONS
Setting the right expectations (both internally and externally) is vital to providing great
social support. Internally, you want to be very clear with your employees about how you’re
expecting them to engage on these networks, if at all. It’s a good idea to have a negativity
plan in place for when they encounter unhappy customers, as well as an escalation plan
Set expectations internally
so they know when and who to turn messy issues over to. You should also have one clear,
and externally, so your
concise place where they can look up hashtags, messaging, and company best practices.
employees and customers
Externally, you want to make sure you’re up front about how responsive you’ll be to
have a clear understanding
customers. For example, you should post the hours your customers can expect you to
of how to behave and
engage, all the channels they can use to reach you, and how quickly they’re likely to wait
before getting a response. Once you set the expectations, you have to deliver on them. It’s what to expect.
better to tell your audience that you’re only available from 10 am to 3 pm (although this
is not ideal for the 24/7 world of social) than to say you’re always available and respond
within an hour, if it’s blatantly not the case.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 3

5. 3 BUY YOURSELF TIME.
Social media has undeniably shifted consumers’ expectations. It has sped up the
customer lifecycle, as well as how long they expect to wait before hearing from you after
they ask a question or report a problem. In fact, 42% of people who reach out to you
on social media expect a first response within 60 minutes. That’s not a lot of time to see a
question, find the answer, and close the loop. Succinctly. In 140 characters or less. On
42% of people who reach
top of all the other work you have. The Get Satisfaction HootSuite integration is designed
to help find and send the right community answer to a customer question in Twitter or out to you on social media
Facebook, but we’ll get to that in our next tip. expect a first response
within 60 minutes.
While people expect a response almost immediately on social, that doesn’t mean you
have to provide a definitive answer that quickly if one isn’t at your fingertips. A quick,
“Great question, we wonder that too. We’ll look into it & get back to you,” will buy you the
time to find the appropriate answer, work your social media magic to shrink it down to
appropriate Tweet or Wall post size, and respond. Which bring us to our next tip…
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 4

6. 4 IMPORT SOCIAL MENTIONS INTO YOUR COMMUNITY.
This has so many benefits it’s hard to know where to start. When you bring content
from a Tweet or Facebook post into your Get Satisfaction community via our HootSuite
integration, you get rid of pesky character limits, turn the fleeting comment into content Get rid of pesky character
that is persistent and searchable, and drive participation into your community. limits, turn fleeting social
With the click of a button, you’ll create a new topic in your community based on content mentions into content
from a Tweet or Facebook Wall post, fully answer the question in the community topic, that is long-lasting and
then automatically send a Tweet or post back to the user with a link to the answer in the searchable, and drive
community. This preserves the content in a persistent way that’s easy for the next person social engagement with
who has a similar question (as well as Google) to find. An added benefit is the fact the a customer community.
tool helps you to automatically close the loop with your customers, creating all-around
happiness (and effectiveness) for you and your customers.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 5

7. 5 IDENTIFY ADVOCATES AND CHAMPIONS
We know that you can address the questions, needs, and concerns of your customers
all on your own… but with a strong social support strategy, you don’t have to! One of the
biggest perks of social support is it allows you to leverage your most engaged customers
to help each other out on your behalf.
In fact, consumers prefer the opinions of your customers to canned, company-sponsored
responses, so the organic praise of brand advocates is the holy grail of social media
marketing. Your champions are also a great resource to support you when people have Your customers are on
questions or complaints about you on social networks. But first you have to identify and social networks long
activate them. after you’ve called it a
Incentivize these critical customers with Champs programs, web badges, public thanks, day. Activate your brand
insider information, deals, and coupons. To learn more about the demographics of advocates for additional
specific market segments who are likely to use customer communities and the best ways 24/7 social support.
you can nurture a relationship with them, check out this infographic.
It will be extremely valuable to take the time to identify and empower your brand
advocates. Even a few great brand advocates can drive customer acquisition and
dramatically reduce your need to respond to support issues (especially after hours when
you’ve called it a day, but your customers are still on social media expecting a response
quickly).
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 6

8. 6 HAVE A PLAN FOR ESCALATION
No matter how awesome your company, product, and team are, it’s likely that there
will be times when you have a customer reaching out to you online with a question your
social media manager can’t answer, or a complaint they’re not comfortable addressing.
Being transparent in social media means you should always strive to provide as full and
complete an answer as you can from whichever department is most relevant to the
question.
Being transparent in
social media often means
Often this means reaching out to different areas of your company to get them the full
reaching out to different
answer they’re looking for. Tricky product questions should be passed along to someone
on the product team to provide a complete answer. Messy PR issues should be handed off
areas of your company to
to marketing or PR teams. Occasionally, when things really call for some special attention, get your customers the full
they should be escalated to your executive team. answer they’re looking for.
Before your social media manager is confronted with a sticky situation, have a plan in
place so then know when interactions should be escalated, and to whom. It will help them
feel comfortable doing their job, and will ensure these questions and issues get dealt with
quickly and effectively.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 7

9. 7 TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Spontaneous gifts for brand advocates, public recognition, truly going above and beyond
for your customers — however you choose to step up your social game to delight and wow
your customers — social media is a medium that can amplify the excitement created… and
it will.
How do you create
moments of “wow” for your
Empower your team to create moments of awesome for your customers by encouraging
customers on social?
them to send schwag to brand advocates who show you love on Twitter, give public kudos
to especially helpful customers, and otherwise go out of their way to be an awesome
community member. Then sit back and watch the social love flood in!
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 8

10. 8 BUILD LOTS OF ENTRY POINTS
Social media means that your customers are no longer in one, insolated place looking for
your assistance. Customers will come to you on Facebook and Twitter, from your website,
in the comments section of your blog, and in your customer community. Your social
support is only as effective as the entry points to it, so make sure it’s open, inviting, and
easy-to-find!
Get Satisfaction offers widgets that allows you to place entry points to your community Your social support is
anywhere on your website. Make it easy for your customers to seamlessly bounce from only as effective as the
your website, to your social channels, to your community, and your blog. You should also entry points to it, so make
have visible links inviting consumers to share your blog content on social channels. The sure it’s open, inviting,
easier it is for people to find you on social media and share your content there, the more and easy-to-find!
likely they are to do so. The reach this creates will grow exponentially, so make sure you’re
investing in this area.
Don’t forget, most consumers still go straight to Google to find the answers they’re
looking for, so it’s important to make sure your social support content ranks well! (Not
sure how? Go back and review tip 4)
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 9

11. 9 ANALYZE, ANALYZE, ANALYZE
Customer support shouldn’t just be a reaction to a problem. When done well, it can be a
first indication of where things are going wrong, whether it’s a person, product, or feature.
Without data, you won’t know your major pain points, so be sure to capture as much
information as possible about the issues that are vexing your customers. Don’t just react with
Good stats to measure: the average customer wait-time for first response and resolution, your social support.
the platforms they’re using most to contact you to get help, the number of votes or page Proactively identify pain
views a particular community topic has, and the number of support questions answered points and places where
by Champions. you can improve.
Here at Get Satisfaction we understand the importance of great data analysis, which is
why we’ve teamed up with GoodData to bring you Community Health Analytics 2.0. There
are also a number of other online tools that will help you track your various social stats.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 10

12. 10 LET YOUR PERSONALITY SHINE!
Everybody always talks about being authentic on social media. The best way to ensure
you sound authentic (like a human—not a robot) is to say your response out loud to your
coworker. If it comes out of your mouth feeling natural, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll sound
that way to your reader as well.
Get out there and be you!
Depending on your brand, feel free to sprinkle emoticons and words like “yikes,” “oops,” Your customers are going
and “yay,” to give it a little extra flavor. You can also sign your tweets or posts with your
to love your unique social
name or initials to give it a more human touch. And when in doubt, a little empathy and
mediaisms. Trust me. ^HJ
honesty (a la “I am so sorry that’s happening to you. Looks like a bug our engineers are
working out right now. Will keep you posted”) can go a long way towards reminding your
customers that you’re a human over there, and you’re working to fix their issues as quickly
as possible.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 11

13. CONCLUSION
Social Support is not a passing fad… customers have come to expect that companies
will be there for them in a more social and authentic way. And that’s a good thing for
you and your brand! At the end of the day, nobody wants to feel like the source of his or
her frustration is being handled by a robot, PR team, or (worst of all) a black hole. Social
media means that support issues that are handled poorly can attract a lot more negative
attention than ever before. But the reverse is also true. Support issues that are tackled Interested in learning
proactively, responsibly, and transparently provide great opportunities for your brand to more about how a Get
shine. Satisfaction customer
And don’t forget, a customer community will help you leverage your customers to help community can help
each other, transform fleeting social mentions into persistent, discoverable content, you deliver excellent,
and will enable you to place entry points into your community wherever your customers low-cost social support?
are — on your website, social networks, mobile, and search. Add our integrations with Give us a call at:
great partners like HootSuite and GoodData to the mix, and you have everything you need
for an intelligent, easy to manage, easy to evaluate social support plan. 877-339-3997
to schedule a demo,
or visit us at
https://getsatisfaction.com/
corp/solutions/support/index.
10 BEST PRACTICES for Social Support 12