I know a lot has been publicized about using social media as a way of providing excellent customer service. I think this is just one way social media can be used; it’s also probably the most time-consuming and has the greatest possibility for doing more harm than good. The reason I say that . . . unless you have expert personnel able to address customer service inquiries, complaints etc. quickly and efficiently, than using social media to show off how much you care, your responsive and knowledge etc. isn’t really going to work all that well. If you do consumer forums where customers help customers, I can see that working, but none of the social media platforms in my opinion, lend themselves to that function very well. Plus, you have to have highly invested individuals or advocates of your brand or product that would participate – very difficult to gain traction in.

I’m in the camp that social media doesn’t have to be a customer service tool and in most cases, actually should not be one. You, as a company investing in social media, are contributing lots of money and time to making these social pages work for you. Yes, there is the interaction part, which is great and everything, but you don’t have to allow people to bash your brand on a site you are paying for. That’s just silly really. If someone posts something you don’t like on your page, you aren’t committing some sort of cardinal social media sin by erasing it. Just because a lot of people know about this customer service in social media idea, you set the objectives and purpose of your page. Consumers may feel entitled to voice their opinion, but you also have the right to manage your page the way you want. For most of my clients, we will leave criticism up if it meets a standard of intelligence, meaning it’s not the ranting of a crazed and incoherent individual. If it actually has some substance and is written in a respectful and thoughtful way, we keep it. But, set a protocol for how to handle negative feedback ahead of time, because it probably will happen at some point, and you should have philosophy on how to handle those situations. Also, if you don’t want to use your page for customer service, make sure to not include any posts or language that would lead people to think that. That way, you aren’t falsely promising something you can’t really deliver on.

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