One of the best places to interact with your customers is via social media! Cruise through this Slideshare to learn about the right mindset to have to utilize social media effectively. We also included a few examples of good and bad ways to interact with customers on Twitter.

1. How to Help Your
Social Media
Customer Service

2. Meet the Author!
Mitchell Causey
@MitchellCausey
Mitch Causey is the Director
of Marketing at Lesson.ly, the
easy learning software.
Lesson.ly helps companies
like Lyft, Angie’s List, and
ModCloth improve their
employee learning programs
by allowing them to build,
share, and track their
materials all in one place.

3. Customer service and social media
marketing both require a lot of
thought to be done well.

4. By following a process that fits your specific
needs, you can save some brain power.

5. I’ve come up with a 3-step social media
customer service process that works for
both you and the customer. Check it!

6. Mindset of
“Us” Not “Me”
Step 0:

7. If you’ve been in the
business world for any
time, you know one of
the most consistent
and potent battles is
that of the mind.
Mindset of
“Us” Not “Me”
Step 0:

8. Mindset of
“Us” Not “Me”
Step 0: One of the best ways
to win the mindset
battle is to align your
goals with your
customer’s goals.

9. Mindset of
“Us” Not “Me”
Step 0: Try saying “us not me” to
yourself before reaching out
to customers to be better
prepared for the emotional
rollercoaster that may
happen during your day of
delighting customers.

10. Sell or Renew
Step 1:

11. Sell or Renew
Step 1:Understanding the
relationship a customer
or prospect has with your
company is an important
first step for framing your
conversation.

12. Sell or Renew
Step 1:Knowing this relationship
will allow you to
understand if he/she is a
current customer or a
prospect, as well as a
general tone over time.

13. Sell or Renew
Step 1:Once you are able to
figure out if the person is
a prospect or a current
customer, you can
establish your end goal
for that communication:
sell or renew.

14. Triage for Priority
Step 2:

15. Triage for Priority
Step 2: For companies with a high
volume of interaction on
social media, it’s crucial to
prioritize your time
appropriately.

16. Triage for Priority
Step 2:
The best way I’ve found to
prioritize communication
is what I like to call the
Triage of Happiness:
Unhappy
Happy
Neutral
Happiness

17. Triage for Priority
Step 2:
In general, I treat the
unhappy communication
as the highest priority
because of the old adage
that people tell about a
bad experience more
than a good one.
Unhappy

18. Triage for Priority
Step 2:
The second priority are the
happy messages. I suggest
this over neutral for the
second spot because you’ve
got momentum.
Happy

19. Triage for Priority
Step 2:
The third priority are the
natural messages. These
should be addressed after
the others because the
sender is not on either
side of the fence.
Neutral

20. Respond
Accordingly
Step 3:

21. Respond
Accordingly
Step 3:Finally, once you have the
right mindset, have
established whether the
contact is a customer or a
prospect, and have triaged
the messages for priority,
it’s time to communicate.

22. And now I have collected some practical examples of
how to respond accordingly based upon where a
customer is in the Triage of Priority.

23. Unhappy Customers

24. Unhappy Customers
For those unfortunate circumstances where a
customer or prospect is upset with your company,
your goal should be to shift the communication
from Unhappy to Neutral by taking it offline.

25. An example of what to do
“Dove Stains Clothes”
Unhappy Customers

26. Unhappy Customers
An example of what to do
In this situation, the customer’s clothes have been
marked by a Dove product in spite of the company’s
messaging explicitly promoting otherwise.
The Dove communications agent did what we
should all do in the situation – take it offline.

27. Unhappy Customers
An example of what to do
Is there a public email address you can send to
customers instead of the follow/DM process?
Put to Action

28. Unhappy Customers
An example of what to do
What I especially like about the way Dove handled
it was that they don’t require the user to follow
them for a Direct Message, instead they provide
the appropriate email address to send a note to.
Is there a public email address you can send to
customers instead of the follow/DM process?

29. An example of what NOT to do
Unhappy Customers
“Comcast Doesn’t Follow Up”

30. Unhappy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
The rep did just what he was supposed to by
asking for the follow/DM and even got to the
point where it was taken offline.
Then, however, he apparently stopped
communicating and it returned back to
Twitter for all the world to see.

31. Unhappy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
How can you make sure each open case gets closed
quickly with follow up in your business?
Put to Action

32. Happy Customers

33. Happy Customers
For the interactions where people are going
bonkers for your company (in a good way), your
goal should be to leverage that happiness to
promote more happiness from more people. Share
it, respond how they would want you to, promote
it, repurpose it, and have fun with it.

34. An example of what to do
Happy Customers
“Husqvarna is Human”

35. Happy Customers
An example of what to do
This is an incredibly simple, but incredibly
impactful example by one of my favorite brands
(Husq chainsaws or bust).
The customer was clearly happy with the new
mower he purchased from Husqvarna and
made the public aware. A friend connection
chimed in to share the same sentiment

36. Happy Customers
An example of what to do
Then Husqvarna responded to the friend, not by
saying “we are glad you are satisfied” or “thank
you for your purchase, please buy this other
product,” but said “thanks dude” just as any
normal human being would do.
It shows us that there is a human behind the
brand, not just a corporate board of directors
setting policy.

37. Happy Customers
An example of what to do
How can you show your customers that you are a
real human communicating with them?
Put to Action

38. An example of what NOT to do
Happy Customers
“Muscle Milk is Missing”

39. Happy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
Listening is crucial in social media, everyone
knows that. Beyond listening though is
understanding who is talking.
In this example a Bleacher Report Analyst with
over ninety thousand followers tweeted a positive
message about Muscle Milk. This was a perfect
opportunity to leverage a fairly influential fan for
free, but Muscle Milk failed to comment.

40. Happy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
How can you better tell which customers you
should respond to if you can’t respond to them all?
Put to Action

41. Neutral Customers

42. Neutral Customers
In the case where communication is neither
positive nor negative, but somewhere in between,
your goal should be to shift it from Neutral to
Happy by replying with a positive, helpful response
that also spreads your brand-specific messaging.

43. Neutral Customers
An example of what to do
“Dollar Shave Club Shares Reviews”

44. Happy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
Dollar Shave Club does a lot of things right,
including sharing their reviews page when the
context clearly calls for it.
The potential buyer was asking the community for
reviews, so DSC went ahead and joined the
conversation by sharing their reviews page, taking
it from a wild west of communication to a more
moderated place.

45. Neutral Customers
An example of what to do
In addition, they continued following up within
the same thread on Twitter, showing that they
want to add spice to people’s lives, not just make a
quick sale.

46. Neutral Customers
An example of what to do
Can you leverage current reviews if someone pings
their network for some opinions?
Put to Action

47. Neutral Customers
An example of what NOT to do
“Hilton Doesn’t Respond”

48. Happy Customers
An example of what NOT to do
Hilton didn’t do anything wrong here, but that’s
the point – they didn’t do anything.
If there are conversations going on around a
significant individual like that, it’s crucial to be a
part of them and leverage them for your brand’s
positive image.
Sadly, I don’t think they even tweeted anything
from their own account.

49. Neutral Customers
An example of what NOT to do
How can you be more aware of key events that
could have mass appeal for your brand?
Put to Action

50. Want to develop your #custserv skills?
Download the FREE
Customer Service
Training Manual