Social Re-Emerges as a Customer Service Channel
Nearly a generation ago, when social media was in its infancy, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter (now X) were expected to completely take over the way that businesses communicated with their customers. Businesses began to establish social media profiles, and customers started using these platforms to share feedback, ask questions, and even lodge complaints, but the massive dominance of social media as a customer service channel didn’t happen as expected at the time.
Today, with the recent advances in artificial intelligence, expectations for social media customer service are higher than ever. The integration of AI and automation is now transforming social media customer service, enabling businesses to provide faster, more efficient, and potentially personalized customer support that wasn’t possible the first time around. Customers today are increasingly using digital communications, particularly a much wider variety of social media platforms, to communicate with companies for customer service and other needs.
“Our research shows that we’re in the early stages of a social customer care boom,” says Scott Morris, chief marketing officer of Sprout Social, a provider of cloud-based social media management software. “While all generations are turning to social for care, Gen Z is undoubtedly changing how social media is used, and we’re starting to see brands catch on to meet this generation where they are.”
Research from Verint supports the notion that social media use for customer service is on the rise at unprecedented levels. Consumer preference for digital stands at 61 percent, up from 45 percent only two years earlier, the research found, and 72 percent of consumers said they had used social media in the past year to contact at least one company; meanwhile, phone and email channels were on the decline, down to 66 percent and 63 percent, respectively.
“People want to call less and less,” says Jason Valdina, Verint’s senior director of go-to-market strategy for engagement channels. “Part of the reason for that is that there is public social media. Anyone can see a public tweet or a public communication on Facebook. And most of these platforms have direct messaging or private messaging capability. I think the rise of having bots on these channels, particularly self-service bots, has made people realize that they [usually] don’t have to call a company, which many prefer not to do.”
Credit AI for the recent spike. As AI has advanced, it has led to increasing chatbot solutions for customer service through social media and other channels. And while some customers still prefer interacting with a human, many more are now comfortable with AI-based solutions, according to research from Sprout Social. The company recently found that 73.5 percent of customers strongly or somewhat agree that they’re comfortable with companies using AI to deliver faster customer service on social.
Still, there is much more that can be done.
“Chatbots have become table stakes for brands, but they haven’t necessarily revolutionized the customer experience,” Morris says. “Most consumers (72 percent) have dealt with chatbots before, but only one-third rate their experiences as very satisfying, and one-third say their issues were fully resolved. Almost half (47 percent) of consumers who’ve used chatbots have had to manually route themselves to another channel to get their problem fully resolved.”
Channel Sprawl
Part of the reason for that is the much wider variety of social media channels available today, with each one catering to different types of audiences. The style of communication can be very different among the different social media platforms. LinkedIn, for example, tends to have a more professional tone than X or Facebook, though there is certainly plenty of crossover.
Experts agree that the tone or style (professional, conversational, friendly, etc.,) should be dictated by the company. Several AI-based platforms today make it relatively easy to change the style of the communication for different audiences.
“Brands must personalize their approach to the person they are speaking to, not the channel,” says Dan Hartman, director of CX product management at CSG International, a customer engagement, revenue management, and payments solutions provider. “While audiences might trend in one direction—more technical on Reddit, younger on Instagram—sweeping generalizations about channels kill personalization. No matter where customers ask their questions, they’re looking for timely, satisfying responses and consistent experiences.”
A few years ago, Twitter (since rebranded as X) was the central hub, both for cries for help and service discovery. However, it has fallen off for these purposes in recent years, and Reddit has largely taken its place, says Sid Banerjee, chief strategy officer of Medallia, a customer experience management platform provider. “There are entire channels on Reddit dedicated to customer service, and it’s incredibly useful for reaching certain demographics.”
Whether its Reddit, X, Facebook, or another channel, companies want consistent and coherent communication, according to Virginia Mateos, group head of marketing and communication at Covisian, a customer experience services and technologies provider. “The most important thing is to be coherent, that all the messages that you share on all the channels are coherent, regardless of the type of communication,” she says.
It’s also very important that you have real omnichannel communications, Mateos adds, noting that some customers will use multiple social media platforms during the course of a single conversation (one with multiple messages) with a company. “If I’m answering a client on WhatsApp, it would be ideal to know if I had handled that client before on Facebook or Instagram and what I told that client on those channels.”
That will help the customer feel unique and enable the company to provide a more personalized experience, Mateos explains.
AI can help with that, adjusting messaging as needed.
That has been the experience at Alorica, a customer experience outsourcing provider that uses social media as a leading customer service channel.
“Our teams use real-time AI to monitor sentiment, suggest context-aware replies, surface relevant policies, and adapt messaging across platforms,” says Harry Folloder, Alorioca’s chief digital and technology officer. “But it doesn’t stop there. Our AI also draws from the brand’s full library of knowledge assets, product information, and tone guidelines, also making it brand-authentic in every interaction.”
It’s like having a product expert and brand steward built into every conversation, Folloder explains.
Social’s Scale
But that kind of capability requires a different mindset, according to experts.
“We have a saying at Medallia: ‘Listen, analyze, engage,’” Banerjee says. “Whether through social grabbing, social listening tools, or other means, the first step for effectively using social media as a customer service channel is to pay attention to online conversations and aggregate this information into one place.”
Companies need to deliver one clear voice across journeys, which can be a challenge when customer issues are escalated from marketing and communications roles to technical support and customer care, Hartman adds. “While marketing staff cannot explain a bill change to a customer, care agents are not experts in brand voice. And social media complicates this further because it’s a town hall, so issues tend to quickly escalate, harming reputation and retention.”
Social media has become a preferred channel for customers to voice complaints, so the message goes beyond the company and to the general public, Mateos agrees. “When people contact us with social media, it’s because they want instant responses,” she says.
The town hall effect is why Sprout Social’s Morris recommends that companies quickly move escalating issues off of social media to a private chat or voice channel, but only after acknowledging the issue publicly to show accountability.
“One thing brands need to always keep top of mind is that social media is one of the most visible and high-risk customer service channels,” adds Steve Zisk, senior marketing director at customer data software provider Redpoint Global.
Zisk adds that the key to turning complaints into positive experiences is to respond quickly, recognize the customer, and resolve issues transparently. To that end, he recommends two quick tips:
- Ensure speed.Social media users expect fast responses. Leveraging AI-powered alerts and routing ensures complaints are not overlooked.
- Realize that personalization matters. Generic “Sorry for the inconvenience” is not enough. Companies must acknowledge a customer’s history and reflect personalization in their response.
“Businesses must be able to recognize when automation begins to damage CX,” Zisk says. “If a customer feels trapped in an AI loop, for instance getting unhelpful, robotic responses, this can escalate frustration and damage brand trust. The best strategy is to blend AI efficiency with human empathy.”
“Speed is essential, but speed without substance can backfire. One of the biggest missteps is over-automating or delaying responses. A generic reply or clunky handoff can spark a viral backlash,” Alorica’s Folloder says.
So Alorica combines automation with human-in-the-loop support to preserve context and ensure every escalation feels seamless and smart.
Mounting Concerns
Agent scheduling is another important factor in the use of social media for customer service, says Elizabeth Tobey, head of marketing for digital solutions at NICE. “In addition to meeting the service and style is being able to manage the contact center on the back end.”
“Over time, companies have gotten very good at understanding their [contact center] volume and balancing staffing so that customers don’t have to wait on hold for an excessive amount of time,” adds Verint’s Valdina.
Though an agent might be more proficient with one social media platform than another or with email rather than social media, agents now can rely on AI-powered assistance, augmentation, and knowledge to help them be able to work across multiple products and across multiple channels, Tobey says.
Another challenge with social media is synchronous and asynchronous messaging, according to Tobey. Contact centers need a platform that handles both, offering seamless communication that enables an interaction to restart several hours later without forcing the customer to repeat everything that was communicated earlier.
“That can be a problem in siloed systems,” Tobey says.
Tobey cited NICE customer Dutch Railways as a firm that has handled this correctly. The transit company moved from siloed agent teams to ones focused on entire customer journeys and from a combination of outsourced and in-house environments to a single virtual contact center. Now 90 percent of the contact center’s agents can handle interactions across social media and other channels. The company reduced interaction transfers from 80 percent to less than 1 percent while also increasing first-call resolution.
To avoid issues, all roles need to come together to share knowledge and expertise in a center-of-excellence setting, CSG’s Hartman says. With greater coordination and mindshare between social media teams, CX leaders, customer service representatives, and technical support, companies will be ready to work swiftly behind the scenes to get the customer the right response, in the right voice, and on any channel.
This is another area where AI-based augmentation can help provide customers with the same level of communication, regardless of whether the agent is a Facebook expert or is more proficient with another platform, experts agree.
And as it was in the first go-around, data quality remains a big obstacle to successful customer service experiences on social media today, according to Morris. “Data quality is not given the attention it deserves because most customer data technology relies on third-party solutions for cleansing data and preparing it for business or CX use. There is a misguided notion that it will be taken care of somewhere along the line.”
The problem with this approach is that it fosters siloes, Morris says. As a result, there is no agreed-upon single customer view that is consistent across the enterprise, leading to a disjointed customer experience, especially if the customer in question communicates with a company via multiple channels. This leads to inconsistent responses, delays, and frustration for customers who expect companies to recognize them across all interactions.
On the other hand, if data quality processes are completed as data is ingested, regardless of the source, the resulting single customer view is an unassailable, trustworthy, unified customer profile that is available and accessible across the enterprise, Morris says.
With trusted data and AI to handle differences in messaging between social media platforms and other channels, companies are definitely keying in on social media as they try to enhance their customer service. And that is only going to continue as these platforms proliferate and AI makes them more viable.
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.