1) Show previous interactions on social media

Usually when we think of web customer service the first thing that comes to mind is probably social media, to a further extent Twitter. When you finally get the ball rolling with your customer service strategy and have a handful of customers using it, make these web customer service interactions public for anyone to view. Showing your current track record and how you handle the questions submitted by your customers will convince more people to actually use it.

2) State your dedication toward a quick response

One of your customer’s biggest concerns when reaching out to you for the first time on the web for a question is going to be how long will it take for you to respond back? Now every customer is different in what they expect with this. Some will be satisfied with the response back in 24 hours and others will expect a response back within the hour. If one of your goals is to eliminate the number of calls you receive, then you really need to put an emphasis on responding back quickly. This of course means going with option B and respond back to your customers within the hour and if for some reason you can’t answer their question because of technical difficulties at least respond back to let them know you are working to solve the issue. Sadly it is still too much of a regular occurrence for customer’s questions to be forgotten, so be willing to provide updates of your progress to your customers if you can’t solve their problem right away. Customers never stick around if they feel they have been forgotten about!

3) Let them know the question was received

Sometimes the little details can really help you win with web customer service. One simple example of this is by reassuring your customer that their question was received successfully online; believe it or not this doesn’t always happen. When a customer takes the time to fill out a form, send you an e-mail or send you a tweet, they want to know you’re working on the problem and that the question was received so it’s not floating out there in cyberspace somewhere. All it takes to put a customer’s mind at ease is to have a simple pop-up screen thanking them for their submission or for you to send a quick tweet back letting them know you saw their question and that you will be responding back again shortly with an answer.

4) Start from the beginning with emails and social media

If you would rather have more people reaching you online for customer service help then you need to start the engagement online right away. This means sending them a welcome e-mail or tweet to let your customers know you’re here to help them online with any customer service questions they might have. What you’re doing here is getting your customer in the habit of reaching out to you online and making them see this is the best way to contact you for any of their needs. Now if you were to start the other way with a phone call to welcome them to your service or to thank them for buying your product their first reaction whenever they ran into a problem be would be to pick up the phone and call you since that is how you engaged with them in the first place.

All in all there are so many different ways you can go about letting your customers know how committed you are to web customer service. You just need to find the one or two ways you can showcase the best so your customers are comfortable using the customer service platforms you have built.

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1) Email them pre-written status updates

Sometimes it’s just a matter of convenience for some members of your team. They would be more than happy to share your latest blog post, but they just don’t remember to do it or don’t know what to say, so deliver them in a pre-written update via email. Take the time to be creative when writing this update. The biggest thing you want out of this effort is for a pre-written status to sound interesting so people will take notice. Your team members should want to read it right then and there and those they pass it onto as well.

2) Let them write for the blog

Share the spotlight with your knowledgeable staff and let them write for you on a regular basis. If one of your team members comes up with a great topic for your blog it would be worthwhile to let them devote some time at work to write the blog post. This will not only get your team members marketing your blog, but they will also be ten times more excited about it because it’s their work, they’re participating and they want to see it succeed.

3) Create an incentive for them to be on social media

Sometimes it helps to just add a little incentive to encourage your team to be sharing your blog. There is no limit to what you can do, possibly a reward to the person who can get the most retweets of your blog in a week.

4) Show them how to use social media

One reason that some individuals might not be sharing your blog is because they just aren’t aware or don’t know how to use it. In this case it would be worth your time to educate them. Try pointing them to webinars or videos that do a good job of explaining social media if you don’t want to take the time yourself to educate your employees.

5) Let them pick their social media channel

There is life outside of Twitter and Facebook, even though they are usually the first ones that come to mind when you think of social media, it’s not a must for every one of your team members to be using them. Let your employees pick which social media website best fits their skills and you will actually see your blog reach further to new audiences. For example, if you’re not on YouTube, but one of your employees is and they are doing videos about your latest post you are hitting that audience space without having to do any extra work on your part.

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Ask a question

This is a great way for you to gain added information. For example, if you are a web designer you could ask a new lead what their biggest challenge is currently with their website. This allows you to identify a key problem they are experiencing and get them looking to you for the answer. However, there are two parts to this strategy – one of course comes from an individual responding to the question and the other part is you contacting them back. The second part sounds like a no brainer, but many times it is forgotten and the opportunity for a stronger connection in gone.

List your social media locations

Chances are your customers are using social media and using it on a daily basis so this is an excellent way to let them know you are on certain social media sites as well. Sometimes the hardest part is getting your customer to notice you or for you to get the word out about your social media presence. There is no better time to get someone to like or follow you then after they have completed your call to action because now they are excited about what your product or service can do to help them fulfill their need.

Direct them to your blog

Blogging can do many things for your business and one thing it can do is further convince future customers and current customers that you are the right person to do business with. This is the best way for you to showcase your knowledge and expertise in a format that your customers find interesting and are willing to listen to. Without directly talking about, or pitching your product, convey what you know in a subject that is relevant to what you are providing. This is the perfect opportunity for you to get your customers in the habit of checking into your website on a regular basis. Then when you actually do have a new product to promote your customer will notice the change you made to promote that product on your website, which is the first step in making any sale.

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1) Share someone’s positive tweet

Many of us never think twice about saying something positive about certain individuals, businesses and products that are helpful and have made our lives better. Ever since social media has arrived on the scene we now display our thoughts for everyone to see. If you’re still looking for a reason to get involved in the social media space this is a big one. Being able to hear directly from your customers on what they think about your product is priceless. Now throw in the fact that you can reshare these positive views about your business or product makes for marketing dynamite.

2) Use customer YouTube reviews

YouTube and other video sites are a gold mine for obtaining reviews of your product from your fans and current customers. Once people find out how helpful your product is they are going to want to show others this wonderful product and how they can use it too; especially if you have an affiliate program set up for them to benefit from. We love the originality of web video and we don’t expect them to be perfect however, at the same time it can’t be sloppy either. Imagine the message it would send to your potential customers if you have videos on your website from satisfied customers who love it to the point that they would take the time to review it!

3) Show pictures of customers with your product

Photos are one of, if not the most, sharable form of media on the web. We are constantly uploading and tagging photos on almost every social media site out there. This give us the perfect opportunity to run a fun contest to encourage fans to take a picture with the product and share it on a social media like Twitter and Facebook. Dominos ran a photo campaign a couple of months ago and it was a huge success for them and it can be for small businesses as well!

Your thoughts:

How do you show others how much your product is loved by current customers?

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Bounce rate

If nobody is spending time on your website then there is really no point in having one so you are going to want to consistently track the overall time your visitors spend at your website. Your bounce rate increases if someone arrives on your website and then leaves your website without viewing any other pages. If your bounce rate is high, which seems to vary for everyone (I say anything over 60% is too high), then it’s time to start looking at why people are not sticking around. Here are a few of the main reasons I find that many visitors will bounce from a website.

• A bad web design
• Poor navigations of the website
• The content is not good enough
• Your keywords do not match your website
• Too much advertisement

Traffic sources

Along with tracking your bounce rate comes knowing where your traffic is coming from because you cannot rely on just one web source or even worse not have any traffic sources at all. The easiest way to start getting traffic is to begin with social media or do a pay per click campaign through search engines. If your using Google analytics to track your bounce rate you can also use it to see where most of your traffic is coming from. This way you can see if your search engine optimization strategies are working to your liking and what websites are sending you traffic. A great way to increase traffic from referral websites is to do a guest post if it is allowed. Many bloggers look for guest bloggers and in return you get exposure to a new audience that will become aware of your website.

Brand image

Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing tool for any business and on the internet word of mouth is amplified a hundred times more to become word of mouth on steroids. Now we can influence thousands of people with just one click, making the customer service part of your business the most important part. A lot of your brand monitoring can be done without spending any money. Using a Google tool called Google alerts is the best place to start. By using Google alerts you’ll receive emails whenever someone uses your brand name on the web. This allows you to react to what was said about your company whether it is good or bad.

Audience engagement

The web is a social space, not at all like traditional marketing where everything is a one-way communication only. What you want is to have people talking about your brand and spreading your content. If someone takes the time to leave a comment on your blog, share your content anywhere online or engage with you on a social media site, you need to actively be responding back to those valuable individuals who clearly have an interest in your brand. These are the individuals that could possibly become customers or brand activists.

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What do you think is important to track online?

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