Poor customer service is the death knell for brands on social media.

That's not just us saying this...it's the data.In a recent report by Sprout Social, nearly 60% of respondents said they wouldn't hesitate to drop a brand on social media if they are unhappy with their customer service. Those are some big numbers!We understand how poor, unreliable, and frustrating customer service can be. We also understand that providing consistent and reliable services is difficult and capital intensive. But then as we all know, there is a plausible solution to every problem. So it’s not impossible to reverse the above figures if you use the right tools and techniques. Here’s what you can do.

The Holy Trinity of Social Media Engagement - Content. Curate. Consistent!

That’s the 3 C’s for preserving your existing customers and gain new ones. Once you’re through with understanding your TG persona, it won’t be difficult to grab their eyeballs with relevant content.

Don’t post anything and everything you come across. Do proper market research of the trends and engagement patterns your potential leads are involved with and share curated content accordingly.

And yes, you should be more consistent than you think. Try sharing more stories and posts regularly that involve participation and interaction.

Time for AI-calypse?

From top-grades to startups, Artificial Intelligence or AI tools have been the silver bullet to relieve their customer support team off their regular woes. For the uninitiated, it’s a machine-aided system that works on its own with little or no human intervention. But how will it help you with social media marketing? The answer is AI robots or chatbots.Have you ever been to a brand’s official Facebook page and tried to strike a conversation on messenger? If you get an instant response to every query, chances are the person responding on the other end is a robot. This is possible if the messenger is integrated with an NLP-rich software where the chatbot can be a problem solver, companion or maybe even a humorist! If you are considering integrating chatbot to your social media channels, app or website, these are some of the top benefits you can expect:

• Lead-engagement virtual assistant

From talking to your leads like a human customer service exec to setting up meetings with your sales team, your chatbot can also provide you a KPI report and follow up with email setup. The key is to train your bot regularly with FAQs and synchronized response patterns. Even if it doesn’t have an answer to a particular question, it can always connect the user to a live agent to resolve the issue.

• Humane and humorous

With proper AI training, your chatbot can talk just like a human agent (only better) and make your user smile too. Also, it will be available 24/7/365 and help you take the grunt work out of your sales and marketing team. So yes, it will help you relax and make more space for your R & R activities.

• Feedback collector 

Your customer service is incomplete without you knowing how your customers feel. Your chatbot will ask for feedback about the response management and help you collect enough fodder for improving the virtual customer experience.This is just a scratch on the surface to help you take the wrangle out of your customer support endeavors. Watch out for this space for more tips, how to’s, must-haves, and great-to-haves!