Trending: social media and your CX strategy

Whether a com­pa­ny realis­es it or not, social media is already an inte­gral part of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX). 

For an online busi­ness, it may be one of the few chan­nels for a cus­tomer to inter­act direct­ly with the brand, the plat­form on which they hear of new devel­op­ments, share feed­back and link up with like­mind­ed mem­bers of a brand com­mu­ni­ty. 

Even if the major­i­ty of sales occur offline, social media acts as a dig­i­tal store­front, just as cru­cial for shap­ing cus­tomer per­cep­tions as the in-store envi­ron­ment. More than half (55%) of adults say they’ve first heard of brands via social media and an over­whelm­ing 78% say a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence with a com­pa­ny via social would be enough to get them to make a pur­chase, accord­ing to Sprout Social. 

Yet many com­pa­nies lack a clear plan when it comes to inte­grat­ing social into their CX pro­grams. Accord­ing to recent research by Hoot­suite, 82% of com­pa­nies agree that social is a vital chan­nel for deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, but only 58% have a defined strat­e­gy for doing so. 

This is becom­ing more and more prob­lem­at­ic. As grow­ing num­bers shop online and social media plat­forms them­selves become ever more sophis­ti­cat­ed, it’s an over­sight that could come with seri­ous con­se­quences, not to men­tion plen­ty of missed oppor­tu­ni­ties. 

“Social has become an essen­tial tool to any CRM strat­e­gy and brands can’t afford to ignore con­sumers reach­ing out to them, whether it is to ask for infor­ma­tion, resolve an issue or buy your prod­uct,” says Clare Law­son, chief cus­tomer offi­cer at Ogilvy UK. “In fact, for con­sumers, the num­ber one thing that makes brands best in class on social is ‘offer­ing a strong cus­tomer ser­vice’.” 

So how do you craft a CX strat­e­gy that has social media at its heart? 

A frictionless experience 

The first step is to view CX the way cus­tomers do, as “an unruly col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ences from across a vari­ety of touch­points”, says DuBose Cole, head of strat­e­gy at cre­ative agency Vayn­er­Me­dia Lon­don. 

“No one pars­es a brand inter­ac­tion as ‘social’ or ‘cus­tomer ser­vice’ or ‘adver­tis­ing’, they just see the com­pa­ny,” he adds. “Hav­ing a holis­tic view of how to por­tray your­self and add val­ue at every engage­ment is essen­tial to cre­ate a pow­er­ful and rel­e­vant brand in today’s world.”

In oth­er words, ensure expe­ri­ence is con­sis­tent and seam­less across all chan­nels, be they online or offline. In fact, accord­ing to research by soft­ware as a ser­vice provider Fresh­works, more than a quar­ter (26%) of con­sumers pri­ori­tise being able to con­tin­ue con­ver­sa­tions across dif­fer­ent chan­nels with­out hav­ing to repeat them­selves. 

Domino’s is a great exam­ple, accord­ing to Law­son. Their “Any­ware” cam­paign – which enabled orders to be made across a far broad­er range of devices and plat­forms, includ­ing social media – focused on “remov­ing bar­ri­ers [and] mak­ing expe­ri­ences as fric­tion­less as pos­si­ble”, she says. 

Once you’ve achieved this con­sis­ten­cy “you can start to add addi­tion­al util­i­ty, engage­ment and enjoy­ment”, Law­son adds, cit­ing esports brand Faze Clan as a great exam­ple. “They served the needs of their audi­ence first, then start­ed to widen to mer­chan­dise, part­ner­ships and com­merce.”

It can be a risky busi­ness, of course. “Peo­ple can dis­con­nect from your brand in a heart­beat on social,” says Law­son. That’s why it’s impor­tant to choose the social plat­form that’s the best fit for your CX strat­e­gy, first by map­ping out com­pa­ny objec­tives and then look­ing at the pro­file of your tar­get audi­ence. 

And don’t think too nar­row­ly, Law­son adds.  “Gone are the days when peo­ple say Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram, Tik­Tok and LinkedIn. The play­ing field is much wider. Search engines, pub­lish­ers, blogs, com­merce plat­forms – they all need to con­nect.” 

Take advan­tage of social media as a point of sale, too, by tap­ping the grow­ing num­ber of inte­gra­tive “shop­pable” tools out there. Even new plat­forms like Tik­Tok have recog­nised the val­ue in this, tri­alling “Shop Now” but­tons for brands’ video ads and a “Hash­tag Chal­lenge Plus” ecom­merce fea­ture which allows users to shop for prod­ucts asso­ci­at­ed with a spon­sored hash­tag. 

Talking and listening

Always make the cus­tomer the cen­tre of any deci­sion when choos­ing a social media plat­form, urges Jo Boswell, an inde­pen­dent CX con­sul­tant and for­mer­ly head of cus­tomer val­ue man­age­ment at British Air­ways. “It is vital to under­stand what the cus­tomer is try­ing to achieve and focus on how you can improve the out­come for them, and then work out how a social media chan­nel can sup­port them in achiev­ing that out­come more read­i­ly.”

Ensure too that you deliv­er a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence that com­bines shar­ing con­tent with lis­ten­ing, she adds. “Busi­ness­es need to think about their inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers as ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions, which is as much about lis­ten­ing as it is about talk­ing.”

While many organ­i­sa­tions use social media to push mes­sages out to cus­tomers, they aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly as good at lis­ten­ing through those same chan­nels, she notes. This means pick­ing up on what indi­vid­ual cus­tomers are say­ing and respond­ing appro­pri­ate­ly, she notes. 

“It’s great to have some inspi­ra­tional mar­ket­ing con­tent that will stop cus­tomers scrolling past, but you also need to be able to respond to their com­ments and requests for help.” 

And con­sumers are increas­ing­ly impa­tient. Up to 79% now expect a response from brands on social media with­in 24 hours, Law­son says. If 24/7 avail­abil­i­ty isn’t fea­si­ble, you need to be clear about your hours of oper­a­tion and sug­gest where cus­tomers can find help out­side these times. 

It might be a new arrival, but ulti­mate­ly social media is like any oth­er ele­ment of CX, says Cole. If done right it “respect­ful­ly cap­tures atten­tion, con­sid­ers the best way to cre­ate for con­sumers and their needs and adapts to keep pro­vid­ing val­ue”. 

Great brands, expe­ri­ences and social mar­ket­ing all share the same prop­er­ty, Cole adds. “They start with under­stand­ing who they’re speak­ing to and what val­ue they can pro­vide.”