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Social Media Customer Service: Tips for Handling Feedback and Complaints

A woman holding a tablet and smiling as she oversees customer service on social media, handling feedback and complaints

One of the primary strengths of social media is that the platforms provide a direct channel for communicating and interacting with your audience, customers, and clients. This allows them to reach you in return. That communication will sometimes be positive, while other times customers may voice an issue or complaint. We’ll explain the importance of conducting customer service through social media and how you can handle that feedback and complaints.

The Importance of Customer Service on Social Media

Besides in-person and over the phone, most businesses offer customer service through their email and self-service portals. These are essential for any business that operates digitally. However, with the rising dominance of social media platforms, a growing portion of users have begun to seek customer service through social media channels. In a recent study, 1 in 4 users said they prefer to get customer service through social media, which was up from 1 in 5 just a year prior. The same study also found nearly a fifth had sent a customer service request in the past 3 months. This means it is essential for businesses to offer customer service through their social media.

Answering Questions

The primary customer service task boils down to answering questions. These can be about specificities of a service or product, the cost of shipping, the status of an order, etc. Such questions will often come as direct messages or comments on a specific post. In either instance, a business should answer the question promptly and accurately. If the question is too specific or requires confidential information, be sure to politely direct the communication to an alternative channel, such as email.

Gathering Feedback

Customer service isn’t just about answering questions. One of the things people love about social media is that it provides them with a voice. In fact, because social media makes this so easy, many prefer to provide their feedback on these platforms. This is no different for a business, where customers or clients might provide feedback on their products or services. You can also use social media to gather and survey feedback from your customers/clients. This feedback can take a few forms on social media. It can be comments, direct messages, polls or user-generated content about your business. Sometimes this feedback will be positive, praising your business. Other times it might be requests or suggestions. Be sure to respond and engage with this content, thanking them for the kind words or acknowledging the suggestions. This feedback can be highly informative, and your public responsiveness further helps to build your brand’s sincerity.

Handling Complaints in Social Media

Unfortunately, sometimes the feedback will be negative or even be a complaint. Occasionally these comments will just be abusive. With these follow the old internet adage, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Hide these comments, block their messages, and move on. Other times, these may be more sincere concerns or issues. Treat these earnestly and as an opportunity to demonstrate your care for your products/services and those who receive them. It should go without saying that you should not respond dismissively or, worse, with hostility.

If you begin to notice numerous comments or messages with complaints for the same issue, you should acknowledge you have a more serious concern. In these instances, direct the users to a collective communication channel such as a customer service email. You can also turn off comments on this post to prevent the issue from getting out of hand and create a post or story that directs anyone with the issue(s) to contact your more official channels. Coming up with a set number to make this call at is considered a good idea.

Taking It “Offline”

This brings us back to an important thing to remember about social media customer service. Overall, social media is a powerful and convenient communication tool, but it is highly public and subject to the control of the other platforms. It’s perfect for addressing simple and basic customer service occasions. However, if the service required is more specific or complicated, or the issue or complaint more severe, your social media team should direct that person to more official channels offered by your business. We’ve already mentioned email, but in certain instances you can also offer a phone call. If there is a serious complaint or issue, you can also consider allowing your social media team to direct the person directly to the business manager or owner through email, the phone, or even in person. This provides a direct access that they might appreciate.

Understanding that Customer Service on Social Media is Social

You should now have a better sense of how social media is useful for customer service. However, it isn’t a complete solution. Instead, it will often serve better to address simpler questions, gather feedback, or open a line of communication to another more specific and official channel. It’s still more social than it is official business. For this reason, you can consider using a chatbot to help address any simple questions or direct users to the official communication channels. Just remember that people always prefer dealing with a person for customer service. If you’re looking to incorporate your social media more into your customer service strategies or need help overseeing your social media channels, be sure to contact Rosewood’s social media marketing team.

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Creating a Customer Loyalty Program: Rewarding Repeat Business

A woman smiling as she receives rewards from a customer loyalty program.

Every business, large and small, succeeds when they have returning customers who provide repeat business. In order to keep those customers returning, a business needs to foster loyalty. Quality products/services and excellent customer service are fundamental to creating that loyalty. However, a customer loyalty program is an effective way to help further encourage customers to return to your business rather than a competitor. We’ll explain what kind of customer loyalty programs foster true dedication and encourage repeat business by rewarding your customers.

The What and Why of Customer Loyalty Programs

Today, customer loyalty programs aren’t something new. In fact, they are fairly common, being offered by many businesses from your major chains to your local café. Their profusion is simple to explain: customer loyalty is important. 57% of customers and clients spend more on brands to which they are loyal. 71% of customers say loyalty programs are an important part of their relationship with businesses and brands. In turn, businesses that show the most loyalty can grow their revenues at 2.5 times the rate of their competitors. Loyalty programs are especially effective in e-commerce for their convenience, where they can increase average order quantity by 319%!

Quality is Key for Building Loyalty

Before creating a customer loyalty program, we should understand what true customer loyalty means. Many businesses today offer loyalty programs which often provide rewards such as discounts or exclusive items. The average customer is enrolled in just over 14 loyalty programs, but they are only active in less than half. They might be enrolled in multiple loyalty programs, but they are only loyal in their actions and business to a few. So while a loyalty program helps to secure that repeat business, customers say that price, quality of services/products, and trust are the essential basis for generating real loyalty.

True Loyalty is a Reciprocal Relationship

Offering a loyalty program means little if customers don’t feel that you are loyal to them in return. Customers only feel true loyalty if a business shows as much care in what they offer customers or clients as what the customer wants. True loyalty, including customer loyalty, is built on a reciprocal relationship of trust. That trust comes from honesty, reasonable pricing, an intuitive and accessible website, and quality services and products. Other critical strategies include being personable and engaging with your audience as well as listening to them to develop personal connections. The loyalty program is that extra incentive that reminds customers of their loyalty for that quality. It fosters dedication because a loyalty program acknowledges the support it receives from those customers’ repeat business.

How to Create a Successful Customer Loyalty Program

Not all customer loyalty programs are created equal. Some are cumbersome to use. Others are just not rewarding, leaving them unused. With many loyalty programs out there, you want to create one that customers feel truly rewards their continuing relationship with your business. This will help ensure you see an ROI as customers keep returning to purchase your products or services. There are a few essential guidelines for creating an effective and rewarding loyalty program that helps encourage repeat business:

  • Points Based Systems – Overall, customers prefer points-based loyalty programs. These systems give customers points for every purchase they make, possibly offering further points for certain kinds of purchases. Customers can then use their points to receive discounts, exclusive offers, or even redeem free products. Customers like points systems because they can see the reward in each purchase, and they can track how close they are to their next discount or offer.
  • Balanced Rewards and Redemption Offers – Even if a points system is encouraging, the rewards or redemption offers need to be substantial. They will stop engaging with the program if they rarely or never feel rewarded. However, you do not want to reward so much that your loyalty program starts costing your business more than the repeat business is generating. This is a delicate balance. You will need to determine by looking at current customer behaviour and other industry standards.
  • Frictionless and Intuitive – Be sure that your loyalty program is easy to use, understand, and redeem from. If it is confusing or cumbersome to redeem a reward in process or restrictions, customers will simply not engage with it.
  • Personalization, Curation, and Customization – Surveys have shown that personalization is extremely important to customers for them to engage with loyalty programs. This includes curated or customizable offers as well as personalized communications that might include such curated offerings.
  • Offering Experiences – Customers are no longer just interested in products or services. Instead, many have become interested in brands and businesses offering experiences. Loyalty programs are an excellent way to offer such experiences to your most dedicated customers. For example, rather than receiving a discount or free products, rewards can also be lessons or attending an exclusive event. Such offers also help to foster a community among your loyal customers and can be a great way to encourage user generated content on social media.
  • Loyalty Tiers – Lastly, loyalty tiers help to further reward repeat business. Depending on how frequently a customer purchases products (usually based on the previous year), they go up in the loyalty tier. The higher the tier, they receive better incentives or rewards. For example, the highest loyalty tier could receive free shipping or flat discount. These provide your most loyal customers with extra rewards. It also also encourages others to seek the rewards for their repeat business.

Loyalty Is What Makes You Stand Out

You should now understand how with a strong basis in trust for your products and services, you can create loyalty that fosters a strong connection. A customer loyalty program is key to encouraging and rewarding customers for that repeat business. However, that loyalty program needs to stand out by being intuitive and personable. If you’re ready to add or reinvigorate your e-commerce’s loyalty program, be sure to contact Rosewood Marketing’s web design and digital marketing teams.

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The Psychology of Web Design: Creating an Intuitive User Experience

A web design implementing some key principles adapted from psychology

A lot of thought and planning goes into designing a website. Today, our design team benefits from decades of research about the psychology of how users navigate websites. Along with years of practicing to enact those principles, we have a better sense for creating an intuitive experience. For businesses, that helps users effectively learn about your business and complete purchases or hire you. We’ll explain some principles from psychology behind creating intuitive user experiences.

The Psychology of Web Design

Most humans process visual information in a similar way. Our eyes and brains work together to comprehend complex visual information. Today, psychology has a better understanding of how these systems work. However, human brains and eyes didn’t originally develop for screens and computers. So, web design applies this knowledge from psychology to create websites that are intuitive for people to navigate and use. There are a few principles that have become standard in the psychology of intuitive user experiences.

Fitts’s Law

The psychologist Paul Fitts studied how humans select a target and created a model that predicts the speed humans move their aim to that target. Originally, Fitts was looking at pointing, but today computer scientists and web designers continuously use Fitts’s law for predicting how fast humans can intuitively navigate an interface with a mouse pointer or their finger. The two primary factors of speed in Fitts’s law are size and width. The larger and wider something is, the faster someone can target it. This is why buttons in web design are larger than other text and horizontally oriented.

Fitts’s law is a great example of how psychology is critical to intuitive and ergonomic web design. Rotating a button 90° to be vertically oriented would be the same size and potentially closer to a mouse pointer. Plus, it might seem a better choice for vertical displays like mobile devices. However, the psychology of human visual systems makes it so that a taller but thinner button is harder and slower to interact with, and so less intuitive.

Hick’s Law

Another important principle from psychology, the Hick’s or Hick-Hyman Law is all about limiting choice. This psychological principle shows how for every additional choice a person will logarithmically take more time to decide. This is why too many options can lead to “decision paralysis” where it’s hard to make any choice. For web design this means reducing the number of choices you present to users at one time so they more intuitively navigate through your website. For example, presenting 16 buttons that navigate everywhere on the first screen can immediately overwhelm a user. Separating these buttons into sections on a home page, or into their own dedicated pages in a navigation flow will create a more intuitive experience that guides users through the choices they want to make.

Gestalt Principles

Another important practice from psychology critical to intuitive user experiences on your website are “Gestalt Principles.” These principles are a system of how humans interpret and organize visual information we see by grouping and recognizing patterns. A few of these are extremely beneficial for creating intuitive websites.

Hierarchy

Information arranged into visual hierarchies is critical to any larger visual project. For example, online stores sometimes have tens or even hundreds of options. According to Hick’s Law, that could be paralyzing. Using visual hierarchies allows us to better organize those choices into a set of larger more refined choices. Consider how someone chooses food at a restaurant. They typically go through the larger categories (e.g. salad, entrees, soups) before picking a certain item in that group and then selecting the specific options for that dish. The same can be accomplished in web design: major product categories, a main product page, variations on that page.

There are various ways to create visual hierarchy:

  • Size – larger elements are seen as more important and attract more attention. This is why headings go up in size with titles as the largest.
  • Colour – colours with certain hues, more saturation, or high contrast will get more attention. This can be applied to buttons, icons, graphics, and text. In fact, it’s an old practice for text and is where the term “rubric” comes from. Rubrication was making certain text like titles or headers red in old manuscripts to visually stand out.
  • Alignment – Something’s placement can have it gain our attention first or last. This depends on culture and language. For example, those who read western languages tend to give priority to things more left and at the top, while those who read Arabic will give priority to things more to the right.

Proximity

Humans group things together that are visually close to one another. This is used in web design to create visual associations between copy, images, videos, and buttons. Those closer together are intuitively understood to be more related than elements placed farther away.

Similarity

Besides being close, we also create associations between things that are visually similar. This can be because of an associated icon, distinct font types, or using specific colours. For example, a solid colour with high contrast can intuitively identify buttons. Those colour associations can then be made more specific. If every reference to one kind of service your business provides is in blue and another is in red, a user intuitively understands the colour associations and how to navigate your site.

Remember Accessibility

Keep in mind that these psychological principles for intuitive user experiences are usually defined according to an average user. Don’t forget to consider accessibility when designing a website. A part of your design might not be as intuitive to someone who is visually impaired or lacks full colour vision. Ultimately, the best way to determine if your web design is intuitive is to test user experiences.

Mindful Design

We can’t discuss every way psychology has helped to develop intuitive user experiences in web design. However, these laws and principles have become fundamentals of visual design. Understanding the psychology behind them helps to create a mindful design. Through these principles, you can develop a website that is truly intuitive and that also accounts for accessibility. If you’re ready to create an intuitive user experience for your customers and audience, be sure to contact our web design team.

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