What does this mean?
Right now, you probably have three ways of going about Customer Support.
1. You have a team (or individual) that reads reviews and comments.
2. They engage and respond to customers on YouTube or Threads, or other platforms.
3. They answer support emails and provide technical assistance over the phone.
When working in tandem, these three methods create your overarching Customer Support System.
The problem with Customer Support, as our team sees it and coming from someone who has done all three of the above, is that B2B companies often think the problem is the complaint itself. They’re not thinking about where the complaint is coming from, or why the person feels the need to immediately vent on social media.
Instead of asking, why is everyone complaining on YouTube about a technical issue (like a login problem to their account), think, why is YouTube their default means of communicating this issue?
Yes, in this hypothetical your login process needs to get fixed. Let’s not discount that. But the problem is really that your customers are giving your competitors free advertising. They’re venting because they have nowhere else to go.
Really good customer support means looking at the problem from the customer’s point of view. By the way, this doesn’t mean the customer is always right. If the customer were always right, nothing would ever work, ever, and brands wouldn’t make any money.
These days, support and true service go hand in hand. You can’t just have a phone number or email at the ready when someone can’t access their account. You have to be active and available when someone vents on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, or any social platform.
When you’re social listening, you’re not just providing a solution to a problem. You’re showing that your brand views its customers as human beings, not just an opportunity for a sale. Personalization makes it all the better, but you can’t just send a canned response along and expect a thank you. Social listening means honing a keen ear and tone for developing a human brand voice.
It means apologizing in the first person. It means saying thank you for your feedback, we promise we’ll use this to help our team. And it means being a person first.
This is where a holistic perspective on support means everything to your brand. Active Social Engagement, or Social Listening, a blend of customer support with customer understanding, is a way of connecting with your audience from a tactical standpoint, while ensuring that you’re there for them from an emotional one. Listening and engaging, in tandem and often, automatically mean more for support and brand awareness than a quippy remark. They mean you care and want to be better for your customers.
People are conditioned in their day-to-day lives to get customer support this way, and it can be no different in a B2B environment.
