1. 8 Steps to Get the Ball
Originally posted on
January 17,2012 by
Rolling on a Customer
Tricia Morris Service Strategy for Social
Media

2. FIRST STEP
# 1 A s s e m b l e your social media team
As social media continues its
move from a marketing tool to
a method of customer
communication and
support, organizations should
consider bringing their social
media account management in-
house, if they haven’t already.

3. FIRST STEP
A company’s social media team should
include be delegated to directly
collaborative managing day-to-day
representation monitoring, content
from all major distribution and overall social
departments media engagement efforts
including team
members who can
answer/advise on
billing
questions, tech
support issues, etc.

4. SECOND STEP
#2 Account for all your accounts
An Altimeter Group
report shows that the
average large Determine:
• what accounts your organization
company has
currently owns, and also account for
any others with your brand name
attached to them
• which accounts you are actively going
to maintain/monitor, and delete the
rest, or make them
inactive/unavailable for viewing by
social media accounts
the general public.

5. THIRD STEP
#3 Set up a social media workflow
Who will be the main responders for your
social media accounts?
Ask Who will manage/monitor the accounts on
weekends, after hours, holidays?
yourself…
Who will be your organization’s go-to subject
matter experts (SMEs) for product or service
questions, tech support, billing? Who will serve
as backups in the event the primary team
member is absent, on vacation?

6. FOURTH STEP
#4 Create a style guide and a response plan
Create a style guide Develop a social media
or incorporate response plan so that your
existing guidelines organization is prepared to
for consistent brand provide consistent responses
messaging, voice to various types of customer
and tone, and questions, negative feedback
commonly-used and any potential crisis.
terms across all Create scenarios and
social media develop an escalation and
platforms. resolution plan.

7. FIFTH STEP
# 5 Train staff
The Altimeter Group’s recent State of Social Business report found that less
than 20% of 1,000 corporate respondents agreed that their staff knew how to
represent the company on social media, and a majority had no formalized way
of recording social media interactions.
Create social media guidelines and share them with your entire staff.

8. SIXTH STEP
#6 Listen to your customers
Effective monitoring of
social media platforms
can aid in detecting
and resolving potential
customer service issues
before they escalate.
Get to know
influencers that are
part of your social
media following

9. SEVENTH STEP
#7 Respond positively and resolve issues as quickly as possible
Expectations for for customer service on
customer engagement their social media
on social media are high. platforms. In an effort to
Part of your customer provide more expansive
service for social media 24/7 customer service
strategy should include a options, many
set timeframe for organizations have
responding to customer integrated support portal
service questions or software as part of their
issues. Many companies brand’s Facebook pages
publish their timeframe

10. EIGHTH STEP
#8 Evaluate and adjust
According to Econsultancy’s State of Social
Report, more than half of corporate respondents
(52%) say their organizations use Facebook for
reacting to customer issues and inquiries
52% This shows that providing customer service
across multiple social media platforms is
something that all companies are adjusting to.
Take time to develop a plan that will help your
organization link social media to your customer
service objectives. Implement, evaluate and
adjust – and you’ll remain ahead of the game
when it comes to the ever-evolving strategy for
successfully using social media in business

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