Monitoring social media is the basis of all webcare

[Bappy7]

Webcare battles between customer services on Twitter and Facebook are entertaining. Dealing with questions, criticism and compliments on social media is sometimes almost a sport. But webcare has become a profession in itself: if you want to do it right, it costs an enterprising organization serious money. These 11+ tips will help you in your conversation about effective webcare.

Much has been published about what webcare is, how you respond and which channels you choose. Recently, the book Webcare – a tool for relationship management (aff.) by Renée van Zijl was published, only 78 pages long. What this book adds to existing publications about webcare, is that it tells you in rapid succession how you not only set up webcare, but also make it measurable. And this for commercial and not-for-profit organisations in particular.

These are my 11 favorite lessons from her book. Why? I'll be happy to explain. I'll start with lesson 11 c level executive list and work my way up to my personal favorite.

It's an open door, but so very true: start monitoring, then you lay the foundation for serious webcare . In fact, even if you are not ready to implement reactive webcare, then at least start monitoring. Then you get a feel for what is going on among your customers who are active on social media.

Don't know which search terms to search for? Start with a search query that includes your organization's social media account names. The names of your figureheads and important brands. Chances are you'll quickly see new search terms. This way, you'll build your search query every day.

Tip: create a fixed search query that you only adjust for new figureheads, for example. In addition, create a current affairs search query, in which you temporarily include current concepts. Such as terms from the headline of a press release that will soon be sent or the slogan of a new campaign.

10. A customer wants to be helped as quickly and as well as possible via the medium he or she used to make contact.
There is little that is as unfriendly to customers as asking your customer to switch to a different medium than the channel they used to contact you. Why? Your customer wants to be helped as quickly as possible: switching to a different channel will slow you down. In fact, you could lose your customer – switching to the next channel carries the risk that your customer will drop out. Thirdly, you are not following your customer’s choice, but you find it more important to determine how you will help your customer further.