If you are atleast alittle bit familiar with social media marketing than I am sure you have heard either….
For the best results, have someone monitor your social media accounts all the time.
Or…
Social media automation takes most of the work out of social media marketing.
Both those statements sound pretty great right? If only everything was that easy…
The problem with these statements is that they aren’t exactly realistic. Few companies can actually afford or have the time to monitor their social media account 24/7. Likewise, automating everything is a good way to show customers that you don’t care about them.
In other words, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Automation can be useful, but it can’t replace genuine, human customer service.
How and when should you consider using automation? Keep reading to find out.
I will begin by talking about the positives in social media automation. The truth is that maintaining an active social media presence is a lot of work. You’ve got to generate content, work out a schedule, post the content, and monitor messages, comments, and responses.
It can be hard to keep up 100% with on active Social Media account. And if you’re on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest? It would be easy to turn that into a full-time job.
Automating your Social Media can help you o the following:
»» Keep track if your company or industry is mentioned or shared
»» Recommend content for you to consider reposting to your followers
»» Automatically post content throughout the week.
These are ways automation can make your life easier and more consistent. This type of automation does not affect the customer experience at all, and in many cases they actually make it better.
For example, automated posting of content is useful because it keeps your accounts up to date and active even if you’re swamped with work.
However, not every potential use for social media automation is a good one.
It is now time to talk about how automation can be detrimental to your social media accounts.
The biggest thing automation cant do is handle customer service or handle messages.
When a person contacts you on social media they expect a response in reasonable time. They expect to speak to a real person who is capable of understanding their problem and solving it.
What people don’t want is an generic automated response from a bot. It is nearly impossible to have an automated system respond meaningfully to customer messages.
For example, automated bots are only as good as to what you program to do. They can monitor for particular keywords but they can’t appreciate and interpret the nuances of human communication.
The problem with using bots is that their uses are limited. Customers don’t like it when they get generic non-helpful responses.
The use of bots for responses and customer service can lead to disastrous results. Don’t believe me? Check out this ridiculous thread of comments from ASOS’ Facebook page. Once users realized that the responses were automated, they piled on – and the end result was that ASOS came out looking like they didn’t care about their customers at all.
Your decision should not come down to completely not using automation. By maintaining a happy medium between the two you have the potential to have highly active low maintenance social media accounts.
The best way to decide is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. The point of using social media is to connect with your audience and enhance their experience of being your customer.
What does that mean for your automation decisions?
You should always have your customer in mind when making decisions on automation. Will setting up a regular posting schedule and automating posts enhance their experience? The chances are good that the answer is yes.
Automated posting of content means that:
»» Customers know when to expect your posts and will look for them
»» Your account doesn’t appear to be inactive even if you’re on vacation or swamped with work
»» Followers have a steady stream of content to enjoy
These options offer your customers with real value.
The same thing could be said of monitoring mentions, which can help you connect with social media followers and let them know that their mentions of you are appreciated.
However, the rubric of customer experience falls apart when it comes to automated customer service mentions. The one upside is that it ensures that people who write on social media get an immediate response – but that’s where the benefits end.
»» Customers get boilerplate responses that may not address the issue they raised
»» They may feel that you do not care about their satisfaction
»» Automated messages from bots can make your company look callous or ridiculous
So it is a bad idea to use automation? Of course not. In fact, there is one way you can use it to your advantage.
Program one – and only one – response into your automation. It might say something like this:
Dear Customer,
Thank you for reaching out to us. Your happiness and satisfaction are important to us. We can’t monitor Facebook 24 hours a day, but we promise that a real live human will get back to you with a response as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Your Company Name
The benefit of this approach is that the customer gets the satisfaction of an acknowledgement without having to cope with an impersonal response. There’s real warmth to this response, which acknowledges the difficulty of providing 24 hour customer service.
As long as you keep the promise you make in a message like this, you can use automation to let customers know that you care.
Your customers are smart…
The use of your automation should also be. As long as you make creating a stellar experience for customers your top priority, then you can use automation to make your life – and theirs – easier.
