It's no exaggeration; your business’s customer service can determine how well other departments function. This is especially true when using social media customer service software, as it directly impacts sales prospects and influences revenue growth by improving response times and customer satisfaction.
Social media has made customer service more urgent and high-stake situations. Your company’s reply window to queries influences the quality of interaction. It doesn’t matter how much you invest in product development if you aren’t investing as much in customer service.
This explains why every other business now has an A.I. chatbot to resolve simple queries and provide solutions. The goal is to create a positive experience for your customers.
Use tech and automate as much as possible. This allows the customer relations department time to focus on high-priority tasks.
Using social media to service clients is a way to engage with your demographic on platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. Your customers and audience will typically send you a direct message or ‘DM’ regarding an issue. They might also mention and tag your brand or leave a comment under a social media post.
The broad expectation across sectors is for the brand to reply and offer a solution in real-time.
Social listening is important to track and assign key conversations to appropriate teams. This is the point where businesses turn to social media customer service tools for help.
I've listed common questions brands have before working on their social media customer service. Read on to know more.
- Why do I need social media customer service software?
- How is social media used in customer service?
- 9 Best Customer Service Software To Manage Audience Engagements
- Which social media customer service software is best for me?
Why Do I Need Social Media Customer Service Software?
The straight answer? Because everyone else is doing it. This is one of the times when your business simply needs it- not just for customer retention, but to stay afloat.
In a competitive market, brands can't afford to have a lower response rate to customer queries. Customer service-oriented software helps you engage with complaints and interactions from your audience on social media.
You can use automated workflows, and bring multiple channel interactions under one roof. Dealing with customer grievances is especially easier when your team is equipped with the right software.
Complaints about delays or defects can be addressed with a reply and/or an apology, before other actionables. Information can be provided to the customer after updates are received from the assigned team.
Customers today hate having to wait endlessly for troubleshooting calls, now more than ever. Nothing scares away potential customers more than seeing multiple comments lamenting bad customer service. Even worse, discovering that your brand has replied to none of those reviews.
Let’s take the case of UPS. The shipping company needs to ensure online support services for its B2B and B2C stakeholders are top-notch.
The goal for a logistics firm of this size is to enable customers to engage 24/7, through any channel, across languages- all while maintaining a unified tone at every user touch point.
This is only possible with social media customer service software. The company uses CRM tools to categorize customers and offers tailored solutions that meet user needs. In 2023, UPS was recognized by Forbes on its Best Customer Service list, where it stood first.
UPS’ social customer service representative team typically reports to the social media team. The Social media personnel pursue broad online strategies, engagement, and relevant metrics.
The social media interactions determine the level of brand engagement, audience sentiment, organic follower growth, and ultimately- conversions.
This means that the social media customer service reps have time to expedite responses to customer problems. Most of UPS’ customer inquiries are reportedly on platform X (no surprises there), followed by Facebook.
To sum it up, companies benefit from delegating tasks to different departments while having a platform to integrate varied functions.
How Is Social Media Used In Customer Service?
Social media makes customer service faster, personalized, and more accessible. This leads to higher brand-customer interactions, helps with customer retention, and improves lead generation.
Using social media software tools can help identify trends and improve your service strategies over time. As your sales volume increases or as you add more product lines, using customer service tools for your socials becomes imperative.
9 Best Customer Service Software To Manage Audience Engagements
The social media customer service tools listed below are among the top in the industry. They offer integration with social media and review networks to centralize all audience interactions in one hub.
To organize your current workflow, they provide advanced automation features that minimize manual tasks for routine actions.
These platforms offer sentiment analysis and social listening tools, helping you gauge audience perception and refine your brand strategy accordingly.
1. Statusbrew
Statusbrew offers a unified inbox (Engage) that consolidates (comments, DMs, reviews and more) from multiple social and review networks into a single stream. Engagements can be easily filtered by network, language, sentiment, or conversation type, for better organization.
For instance, you can create a view specifically for negative engagements on brand profiles, enabling your team to respond quickly.
Alerts and automations can be set up to auto-hide negative or spam comments, protecting your brand’s online reputation.
Repetitive actions can be easily automated via Rules and Macros, such as sending pre-defined replies with actions or auto-replies on Facebook and Instagram.
You can also auto-tag and assign conversations related to specific campaigns to designated team members.
These automations will improve the overall experience for your customers and audience with your brand on social media.
Social listening for specific keywords can be done on platforms like X (Twitter) and Reddit using the brand keyword inbox.
On the reporting bit, customizable dashboards provide insights into
total conversations, peak activity times, audience sentiment, team performance and which channels drive the most interactions.
While the default reporting templates cover most data needs, you can dig deeper with advanced customization options to create reports to your preferences.
Reports can be scheduled via email, shared through live links, or downloaded in PDF or CSV format.
- Pricing: Free 14-day trial
- Standard plan - $129/month for 5 user seats and 10 social channels
- Premium plan - $229/month for 8 users seats and 15 social channels
2. Sprinklr
Sprinklr can be used to deliver customer service on social media. The platform uses A.I. to automate everyday tasks and provides customer service agents with insights.
The app also provides suggestions for interactions and recommends actionable on a single screen. This gives agents more time to deal with complex issues and inquiries. The platform can help you categorize communications by customer intent, predict issues, and present insights on trending topics.
- Pricing: Free 30-day trial available.
- Self-Serve plan- $199/month for 1 seat on 15+ social channels.
- Customizable CCaaS solutions are also available.
3. Hubspot
HubSpot lets you perform social listening and automate interactions. Your customer service agents can track customer requests on a single forum and integrate it with your CRM database.
The portfolio page gives you an overview of your clientele and lets you hand over clients to team members. The platform also boasts keyword monitoring and an easy-to-use dashboard. The social media analytics software can give you an insight into audience growth, engagement, and interactions.
- Pricing: Free CRM tool available with basic features, for up to 5 users. Multiple plans are available for smaller teams and bigger businesses.
- Marketing hub starter plan- $15/month for 1 seat, including e-mail marketing.
- Marketing hub professional plan- $800/month for 3 seats, including dynamic personalization.
4. Freshworks
Freshworks is a customer customer service software company that offers CRM solutions and sales tools. Freshdesk is the product line for customer support and Freshsales for CRM, both to integrate operations and deliver customer service.
The software is appreciated for its automation, collaboration capabilities for complex issues, and smart assist tools. The user experience is also made easy with simple drag-and-drop options for workflows. Agents can manage and resolve tickets according to assigned priority. This helps your brand offer personalized support at the right time frame.
- Pricing: Free tool available with e-mail ticketing and other basic features. Multiple plans are available for smaller teams and bigger businesses.
- Growth plan- $15/month for 1 agent, including time/event-based automation and multiple mailboxes
- Pro plan- $49/month for 1 agent, including WhatsApp business. and SLA reminders and escalations.
- Enterprise plan- $79/month for 1 agent, including HIPAA compliance. and Agent Assist A.I.
5. Hootsuite
With this platform, you can respond to DMs, comments, and customer service questions, from a central hub. It is also possible to automate and customize your social media inbox to fit your brand needs.
With an overview of comments and messages, team members can collaborate easily. Your customer service team can instantly answer FAQs with a chatbot and assign queries. This reduces inbound messages by a significant margin and ensures round-the-clock availability.
- Pricing: You can start with a free 30-day trial for Professional and Team Plans. Here are the paid options:
- Professional Plan for up to 10 social profiles- $99/month
- Team Plan for up to 20 social profiles- $249/month
6. Sprout Social
Sprout Social has launched Social Customer Care to focus on customer experiences. It aims to provide case management solutions and detailed reporting. The smart inbox feature brings together messages and mentions under one view. This makes it easier to delegate tickets to the right team member.
The platform lets you categorize cases by conversation theme, profile type, follower count, VIP status, and language among other factors. Message spike alerts let your team know when there is a sudden increase in brand mentions. This can help you prepare to address customer needs or resolve crises in time.
- Pricing: A free 30-day trial is available for Sprout Professional. Custom plans can be discussed in the Enterprise plan.
- Standard Plan- $99/month per seat, with up to 5 social profiles, including review management.
- Professional Plan- $299/month per seat, with unlimited social profiles, including digital assets.
- Advanced Plan- $399/month per seat, including CSAT and NPS surveys.
7. Zoho Social
The software integrates traditional channels with social media platforms to help with customer service operations. You can manage different social media accounts tied to multiple brands from a single user interface. You can create rules and automate the categorizing of tickets.
The software then proceeds to assign them to employees, based on the issue description. The social media desk lets companies define SLAs and create workflows. This way, agents can take action, and if necessary, escalate issues to supervisors.
- Pricing: The platform has free subscription plans for up to 3 users, in addition to a free 30-day trial. There are multiple tiers for businesses and agencies.
- Standard Plan- $20/month per user, including mass e-mail templates and calendar booking
- Professional Plan- $35/month per user, including unlimited custom reports and dashboards
- Agency plan- $200/ month, for 5 users, including tools for 10 brands and 7 social channels per brand.
8. Zendesk
Zendesk centralizes audience interactions from the company’s social channels into one unified inbox. Customer support teams can manage, track, and respond to customer queries and resolve tickets.
The platform also lets agents feed the A.I. bot solutions for new issues, without learning how to code. This means that the next customer who faces an issue with the product/ service can get a solution in chat support. The platform has other dynamic features that are optimized for scalability.
- Pricing: The platform has a free trial, and offers startups a free 6-month plan. There are plans for smaller teams and other advanced suite plans. Enterprise plans are customizable.
- Support Team Plan- $19/month per agent, including ticketing system and AI agent
- Suite Team Plan- $55/month per agent, including multiple integrations and a pre-built analytics dashboard.
9. Agorapulse
Agorapulse lets you categorize and prioritize interactions, ensuring that lucrative and time-sensitive issues are addressed promptly. You can also use the analytics feature to track response times and ensure that you meet SLAs.
Inbox assistant and saved replies features are useful for handling multiple conversations. You can use UTM tracking codes when posting links in your replies. This would help you measure your campaign’s performance.
- Pricing: The platform has a free trial and offers customizable plans.
- Standard Plan- $49/month per user for 10 social profiles, including Google Analytics integration and social inbox
- Advanced Plan- $119/month per user for 10 social profiles, including automated inbox assistant and content library
Which Social Media Customer Service Software Is Right For Me?
Platform Integration: For starters, make sure that the software supports your brand’s social media channels (like Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn). Ideally, you should be able to manage multiple interactions from a single interface.
It is also important to consider if the software can filter out messages by language, to be able to accurately address customer needs. This was especially important for the fintech and neo-banking company Vivid, as their customers are all over Europe. With Statusbrew, the company was able to set rules to flag fraudulent comments and sort queries by language.
Value for money: This goes without saying- the pricing must take cognizance of your budget. But another step would be to calculate the potential ROI based on metrics you expect to improve, with this software. Is it customer satisfaction? Is it having a higher response rate? These are factors to consider.
Client Testimonials: Finding brands similar to yours who have used the software, can help you gauge its usability. The case studies may explore how the tools helped in day-to-day operations. It can also give you an insight into potential outcomes and ways to approach customer service.
Flexible Plans: Scaleability is an important factor to look at. Plans with add-on features and upgrades are better options in the long term. The platform should be able to host bigger teams, with an increase in customer service demands.
Software integration: The software must have integration capabilities with existing CRM and other automation tools that you use for project management and analytics. This would help your team have a smooth workflow. If you have specific needs, make sure the software offers API access to maintain functionality.
Data Security: Since you will often be dealing with personal data, you need to make sure that the platform has adequate safeguard mechanisms. Apart from complying with regulations, the platform must support users to diligently handle customer information. You should also be able to monitor and control user and collaborator access.
Customer Support: You better hope that your software service provider cares about you, their client, as much as you care about your customers. We’re making a fair assumption that you do- you have come so far. You need to evaluate the extent of support offered by the software help desk. Some of the providers will help you with onboarding, depending on the tier of the plan you choose. Make a note of the helpdesk platforms and how responsive they are.
In Conclusion
Engaging with customer queries on social media is more cost-effective than conventional methods like phone or email. According to a study, 67% of consumers look to X or Facebook for customer support. This is perfectly logical because call centers can handle only so much call volume, resulting in longer hold times.
Mentioning/tagging a brand or sending a DM can more easily get the attention of the brand. This also allows the user to get back to the issue at a time that is convenient to them. They can access and track conversations and respond to customer support at their own pace. The brand goes where to its customers, not the other way around.
There is a significant advantage for your brand to address a complaint publicly on social media. Apart from customer satisfaction, it demonstrates your brand’s commitment to the wider audience. It is a way to win the confidence of new users and retain old customers. It can also be especially useful to demonstrate good customer service when you want to encourage new feature adoption.
Customer service via social media means you won’t miss messages across channels. Integrating social customer service with your existing CRM personalizes interactions.
Team members and new hires can be equipped with pertinent information on client history and needs. Documenting previous interactions can improve your customer relations approach. Make sure to choose a platform that is user-friendly and easy for multiple teams to execute their functions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a social media customer service software?
Best case scenario- your orders and inquiries start piling up. Introducing your team to alien software when it's go-time isn’t a great idea. Start introducing your employees and social media team to social media-serving customer service tools as soon as possible. This can also help you identify potential leads and business opportunities. Your brand performance can be elevated in more ways than one when your team is acquainted with the tools.
How can I implement social media customer service software in my business?
Think about your business goals. It could be anything ranging from reducing customer response time to increasing audience engagement. Popular software businesses use for social media customer service are Statusbrew, Hootsuite, and Agorapulse. Checking features and price parity of software will help you choose the right one. Train your employees to use the tools, set communication protocols, and ensure data security compliance. Establish metrics of success based on existing customer service performance to measure the impact of the tools.
What should I look for in social media customer service software?
The software that you choose must integrate well with your existing system, and help the overall process. It should ideally help your team manage content and workflows from a single dashboard, without too much fuss. Make sure the platform you choose measures performance metrics, generates detailed reports, and is in compliance with data protection regulations. Software that enables multi-channel integration and collaboration is an important prerequisite.
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