Providing customer service on social media doesn’t have to be a daunting task—even if you don’t have dedicated resources or staff you can still provide quality support for your customers. You just need to be present and willing to help. Simply having a presence is crucial when you consider that 97% of all consumers search for local businesses online. Plus, according to Nielsen, 46% of online users rely on social media before making purchase decisions. Chances are high that your customers and potential customers will be using social to research your business. Make sure you’re there to provide the information they need. This means going beyond just posting messages to promote your services or special deals and start really engaging with your customers to make it known you’re there to support them. People should feel comfortable reaching out and know they’ll receive a response. Delivering quality customer service on social will position your company as one that cares about and pays attention to its customers, helping you build strong relationships, customer loyalty and eventually increased revenue.

1. Best Practices and Tips for Getting
Started with Hootsuite
GUIDE
Building Better
Relationships with
Customer Service

2. 2BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
Building Better Relationships
with Customer Service
Best Practices and Tips for Getting Started with Hootsuite
You found the perfect coffee shop to hold your next book
club meeting. It’s in the right location, has great reviews
but you’re not sure if it has free WiFi. Where do you go to
ask? If you’re like the majority of consumers these days,
the answer is social media.
The Path to Customer Loyalty
Providing customer service on social media doesn’t
have to be a daunting task—even if you don’t have
dedicated resources or staff you can still provide
quality support for your customers. You just need to be
present and willing to help. Simply having a presence
is crucial when you consider that 97% of all consumers
search for local businesses online. Plus, according
to Nielsen, 46% of online users rely on social media
before making purchase decisions. Chances are high
that your customers and potential customers will be
using social to research your business. Make sure
you’re there to provide the information they need. This
means going beyond just posting messages to promote
your services or special deals and start really engaging
with your customers to make it known you’re there to
support them. People should feel comfortable reaching
out and know they’ll receive a response. Delivering
quality customer service on social will position your
company as one that cares about and pays attention
to its customers, helping you build strong relationships,
customer loyalty and eventually increased revenue.
Social Customer Service: No Longer an
Option
According to a Nielsen report, when it comes to
contacting a brand or company, one in three people
prefer to use social media rather than the telephone.
Not only do people prefer to contact companies
on social media, they also expect businesses to be
responsive—in fact, the Arberdeen Group has reported
that 55% of consumers now expect companies to
provide customer service via social media.
Your Hootsuite account has features that can start to
help you better connect with your customers and make
customer service a priority. This guide outlines best
practices for providing quality customer service on social
as well as tips and tricks you can apply right away in your
Hootsuite dashboard.

3. 3BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
Customer Service Best Practices
Set Realistic Goals
Regardless of the size of your business and whether you
have one person managing social or ten, set goals on how
quickly and efficiently you want to handle customer issues.
Ideal Response Time
This depends heavily on incoming volume versus the
number of people on your team available to help.
Keep in mind that customers expect a quick response.
According to The Social Habit, 42% of users on Twitter
expect a response to their customer service issue in
under an hour. Depending on the size of your team, that
may not be possible. Aim for a 24 hour response time.
As your team grows and becomes more efficient, you
can aim to cut that down.
Time Spent Per Issue
How long should you spend on each question or
request for help? In an ideal world, as long as it takes
to get the job done right. Of course, some issues will
require more time than others. Set a time goal that’s
realistic for your business and resources. Keep in mind
that you won’t be able to handle every issue on social.
You may have to move the conversation over to email or
a phone call in order to resolve it.
Every request or issue is a learning opportunity. The
more issues you handle, the better equipped you’ll be at
solving customer problems in a timely manner.
Start Simple
The first step to implementing customer service on
social is simply to let customers know you’re there to
help. Answer complaints or concerns as soon as you
can to show you are paying attention and that you care
about their satisfaction. Helping to resolve an issue or
simply just apologizing for any inconvenience can help
change people’s opinions about your business. Plus,
responding to negativity openly, and actively helping to
solve problems shows that your business is listening
and cares about its customers.
A company that has seen positive results from openingly
addressing negativity is Fairware, a Hootsuite client that
specializes in sustainable and ethically sourced custom-
branded products. To see how Fairware turned a
misunderstanding into positive brand experience, read
our Success Story.
Hootsuite’s Customer Support department takes time
targets in stride, instead placing value on getting the
answer right the first time. We train our customer
advocates along a simple principle:
1. Get good.
2. Get fast.
3. Now you’re good and fast.
“The better resources and training a customer
support department has, the faster they’ll be.
Work less on your time metric, and more on
agent development.”
Travis Fishbein, Technical Lead of Customer Support at Hootsuite
71% of consumers who experience a
quick and effective brand response
on social media are likely to
recommend that brand to others,
compared to just 19% of customers
who do not receive a response.
NM Incite’s State of Customer Service Report

4. 4BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
Determine How You’ll Measure Success
In order to determine the success of your customer
service strategy, you’ll need to figure out if you’re
achieving your goals. Evaluate your service by
measuring:
‹‹ Number of issues addressed
‹‹ Average response time
‹‹ Average time spent on each issue or request. How
long does it typically take to solve a problem?
‹‹ The percentage of cases that needed to be moved
offline in order to be fully resolved
Measuring against your goals isn’t the only way to
evaluate how you’re doing. Remember why you’re
providing customer service in the first place—you want
to support your customers. Are you helping them to the
best of your ability? Ask yourself the following questions:
‹‹ How satisfied are my customers?
‹‹ What’s my typical request or inquiry volume?
‹‹ What type of requests am I getting? (e.g., product
questions, complaints)
Answering these questions will help you better
understand your customers, which will help you better
support them. When you improve your ability to assist
customers, you’ll build strong customer relationships.
Know Your FAQs
There’s a reason most businesses have a Frequently
Asked Questions page on their website—it’s an easy and
direct way to address common questions quickly, saving
time for the customer and the company. Keep a log of
questions that come up on a regular basis and create a
master spreadsheet that contains the best answers—
you can even organize it by request type or category.
Having the answers prepared in advance will help you
reply faster and maintain consistency if you have more
than one person answering questions on social.
If you have a FAQ page on your website, you can direct
people there if it can further help answer their question.
But make sure you try to help them as much as possible
first. You don’t want to answer a customer Tweet with
just a link to the FAQ page—answer their question and
send them to your website if it helps explains your
response.
Set Guidelines
If you don’t already have established social media
guidelines for your business, the time is now. Think
about how you want your business represented on
social. Establish a clear tone of voice and appropriate
messaging (and make sure this matches other aspects
of your business like your website). Your guidelines
should also cover how you want to handle customer
questions or complaints. This will all help you shape a
personality for your business. Then when customers
engage with you on social, they’ll know what to expect—
that builds trust.
“Your data story is key. Measuring
numbers for the sake of numbers is
a waste of time if you aren’t going
to put those numbers to work.
Measuring incoming volume? Use
it as a predictor of future volume.
Measuring satisfaction? What part of
the product are your customers the
most satisfied with? What part are
they least satisfied with?”
Travis Fishbein, Technical Lead of Customer Support at Hootsuite

5. 5BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
Take Initiative
While it’s important to respond to requests for help, it’s
just as vital to engage with customers who aren’t coming
to you directly with their questions or concerns. This
is why you need to create a monitoring plan to follow
online conversations about your business, and individual
products or services. Monitor mentions of your business
and keep an eye out for those expressing frustration so
you can proactively reach out with answers or support.
Monitoring mentions of your business is extremely
important in delivering quality customer service.
Universitat Politècnica de València, (UPV) one of Spain’s
top technical universities and a Hootsuite client, makes
sure to monitor not only direct mentions of its official
handles but also mentions of the university name,
names of faculties, and other keywords relevant to
the university, even including searches for common
misspellings of the university’s name. This helps the
communications team find students and potentials
students in need, which is key for providing great
customer service. Proving your business is actively trying
to support customers will go a long way in building
customer loyalty.
Tip: To learn more about how UPV uses social, take a
look at our Success Story.
Use Hootsuite to Find Customers in Need
Whether it’s your Twitter mentions or a search stream to
monitor your product, you can filter any of your Hootsuite
streams to find customers who may need your help.
1. Click on the stream in your Hootsuite dashboard.
2. Hover over the stream title to reveal the menu.
3. Click on the downward arrow, then select “Filter By”.
4. Enter “?” into the text box. You will then only see messages
that contain a question mark.
Tip: You can also filter using words such as “troubleshooting”
or “help” to highlight messages that may need customer service
attention.
“Besides spreading brand awareness, we
use our social media channels to act as a
powerful customer service tool. Hootsuite
makes it easy to effectively listen to and
engage with our customers.”
Cassidy Stockton, Social Media Manager, Bob’s Red Mill
“We see three times the mentions and activity at the start of a new term, so
there are many questions from students that we can help answer, but only if
we are able to find them.”
Daniel Robles, Digital Communication Specialist,
Universitat Politècnica de València

6. 6BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
What Goes Around Comes
Around
Did you ever find out if that coffee shop has free Wi-Fi? If
your Tweet went unanswered, it probably annoyed you.
It may have even turned you off from checking out the
coffee shop altogether.
While one missed Tweet causing a loss of business
may sound harsh, it is the new reality for business
owners everywhere. Customer complaints or questions
left unanswered can negatively affect your reputation
and your bottom line. According to Bain & Company,
when companies engage and respond to customer
service requests on social media, those customers
end up spending 20% to 40% more with the company.
Just think: one helpful, speedy Tweet could result in
consistent business from a coffee-drinking, snack-
purchasing book club that meets weekly at your
establishment. If you keep providing excellent service—
online and off—they’ll keep coming back. Better
relationships and customer loyalty—that’s the end game
of quality customer service on social.
How to Use Hootsuite to
Provide Quality Customer
Service
Hootsuite can help you monitor conversations about
your business and empower your team with easy
collaboration and reporting tools, helping you provide
quality customer service and build better customer
relationships.
Add Search Streams
If you want to monitor mentions of your business, your
competitors, or your products on social media, try
creating search streams. Create separate search streams
for each word or phrase you want to monitor whether it’s
the name of your product, services or a brand hashtag.
Tip: For more information on saving searches as
streams, take a look at this Hootsuite Tip.
Set up Your Team
If you’re going to have multiple people contributing to
your social customer service, you can create a Team
within Hootsuite to share and assign social messages
or inquiries. This insures that everyone is on the same
page and no customer issues slip through the cracks.
Step One: Set up Your Organization
In Hootsuite terms, your business account is called an
Organization. Within your Organization, you can create
one or several Teams.
Step Two: Create Your Team
Now that you’ve created your personalized Hootsuite
Organization, decide which Team Members will have
responsibility for each social profile. Hootsuite Teams
are flexible to scale with you as you grow.
Step Three: Use Assignments
Once your team has been set up, you can start using
Hootsuite Assignments functionality to ensure customer
questions are routed to the right people. Did you spot a
customer complaint? Assign it to the right team member
to ensure the quickest response and increase customer
satisfaction. Assignments will allow you to monitor
both the progress on tasks and tasks that have been
completed.
Tip: To learn more about structuring your Organization
and Teams, take a look at our guide Hootsuite Teams:
Social Collaboration
“Using Hootsuite, we’re able to serve
our customers more effectively and
on a personal level. Creating that
bond while problem solving results
in happy, repeat customers.”
Allison Butula, Social Media Manager, Herschel

7. 7BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
Measure Customer Service Impact with Analytics
By tracking your support efforts, you’ll be able to see
real value in what you’re doing. It will also help you learn
from, improve on and measure your results.
If you want to see if your new customer service efforts
are making a positive impact, there are several great
modules to choose from.
1. Sentiment: Click “Add a Report Module.” Under the
Twitter menu, select Twitter Sentiment.
2. Follower Growth - Count (or select Follower Growth -
Aggregate if you have multiple Twitter accounts):
Select the Twitter account(s) from the drop down.
3. URL Click Stats - Ow.ly: If you want to track activity
on a certain link you posted, enter the Ow.ly URL
or search for it by choosing one of your Twitter
accounts.
4. Ow.ly Click Summary: View click stats for all your
Ow.ly Twitter links that were clicked on. This includes
total clicks per day, clicks by region and the most
popular clicks.
Tip: To learn more about measurement and analytics,
take a look at our guide Social Analytics: Measure Your
Social Media Success.

8. 8BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE
How to Use the Hootsuite App Directory
The Hootsuite App Directory allows you to customize
Hootsuite by bringing additional services into your
dashboard. If you’re already using a customer service
tool, odds are you’ll be able to incorporate it directly into
your Hootsuite dashboard, creating a one stop shop
for all of your customer service needs—saving you time
and increasing organization with zero overlap. There
are more than 100 apps in the Hootsuite App Directory;
some of them are free, and some of them are paid. Here
are a few to get you started:
Tip: To learn how to add an app to your dashboard, take
a look at this Hootsuite Tip.
SurveyMonkey
The SurveyMonkey app allows you to view a stream
of your surveys and results in real-time, including
survey status and the number of surveys started and
completed. The app also allows you to share surveys to
your social networks directly from Hootsuite.
Foursquare for Business
Get key insights from your Foursquare for Business
account directly within Hootsuite. View, like and share
the Tips left by your customers, review your location’s
recent check-ins and drive traffic to your stores. Monitor
and engage with customers, share updates and more all
in one dashboard.
SnapEngage
The SnapEngage app supports real-time customer
service in the Hootsuite dashboard. You can easily create
and send URLs to initiate a live chat with Twitter users.
The plugin app appears in Twitter streams and you can
select from any of your SnapEngage chat widgets.
Zendesk
Let your customer support teams monitor and manage
their social media channels and support tickets all
from one location in Hootsuite. Easily manage, create,
edit and share tickets and manage them through to
resolution from your Zendesk stream.
Review Trackers
Track and manage your online reviews in one
dashboard. Respond to new reviews about your
business and easily publish new reviews to your social
networks in Hootsuite.
123FormBuilder
Quickly create surveys, registration forms, order forms,
lead collection forms, or even custom forms directly
within Hootsuite. Share the surveys or forms with your
social networks and track the responses and results all
from one place.
Resouces
For more help setting up or improving your
customer service plan, check out the following
resources!
Webinar: Features for a More Effective Team
Webinar: Develop your Social Media Strategy
Blog Post: How Social Media Improves
Customer Relationships
Blog Post: Brick-and-Mortar Location Can Use
Social Media To Drive Business
Strengthen your customer relationships.
Sign up for Hootsuite Pro today.