Social media continues to play an even larger role in not only gaining customers, but in retaining and building relationships with current customers. Best selling author Erik Qualman reported in his video #Socialnomics 2014, that 93% of shoppers’ buying decisions are influenced by social media and that 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements.
But what about your current customers?
Many companies focus the majority of their attention on gaining new customers, often neglecting to include their current customers in their social media strategy. However, if we follow the 80/20 rule (as many marketers do), we know that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers. As such, it is very important to include your current customers in your social media strategy.
Now not to give customers a bad rep, but you often will never hear from them on social media until they are upset. But, don’t assume that because they don’t tweet often that they don’t expect a quick and appropriate response via social media. While we always want to try to take difficult conversations offline, it is important to publicly acknowledge your customer’s comments and make sure they know that you are listening and care. Your strategy on how to respond to a customer will most likely depend on what type of “complainer” you are responding to. The infographic below, based on research from the University of Florida, breaks down the five types of social media complainers that businesses need to be prepared to respond accordingly with via their preferred social platform. The five types of social media complainers are:
- The Meek Customer
- The Aggressive Customer
- The High-Roller Customer
- The Opportunist Customer
- The Chronic Complainer Customer
In addition to laying out the personas of each type of complainer, this infographic also provides good tips on how to appropriately respond to each individual persona. Check out the tips below!
Do you have had an experience when you had to respond to a very upset customer on social media in order to protect your brand? Or, have you had either a very good or very bad experience with a brand responding to you on social media when you were upset about a situation? I would love to hear about it! Comment below with your story or tweet me at @Brianna5mith.
Infographic was created by ExactTarget, you can download it here: How to Deal with Complainers on Social Media.