How can Social Media help with your Ideal Customer Experience?

How you use Social Media can greatly enhance your customer’s experience with you. It can easily be the difference between mediocre and excellent service delivery well before you even meet them!

In some cases, even before they knew they had a problem you could solve.

Good Social Media is a strong part of your Customer Experience Journey long before they even thought to call.

Here’s how:

Convenience as a service

Convenience adds value. People like when they don’t have to try too hard to find a solution to their problem, and they attach value to that as part of your service. 

So when people have a need, for example, ‘Oh look – My garden is out of control, I’d better get someone around,’ their resistance to doing so is often because they don’t want to go through the effort of searching for, finding and screening for a new gardener.

Instead, if they are already connected on your social media, you will be ever-present in their minds. You will be the first gardener they first think of, saving them the bother of looking up a new one. 

Or they are primed for action, waiting for a prompt. They might have that need sitting in their head for a few weeks (as the weeds grow longer) without doing anything. Then your new post pops up, and they have your solution before they even start to look for one. So easy! I just thought of getting someone to mow the lawns, and boom – here they are.

By shortening their effort, you managed to deliver better, more convenient service. A very good start to their customer service journey!

Support of friends

Being connected through friends or contacts means that supporting your business is also to support their community. When they need a gardener, the first thing they do is to rummage through their stock of friends to see if they know any gardeners.

Hiring you as their gardener then is a way for them to support their friend group, and being a friend of a friend, they are more likely to consider your service better than that of a stranger.

All that feeling of goodwill translates to a better overall customer journey.

Demonstration – a sample of your wares

Your Social Media can show potential customers what you are like behind the mask of advertising, and show what it would be like to work with you.

They get to hear your tone of voice, your values and your attitude as they listen to your longer prose or interviews. It lets them know how you think.

Social Media also lets your public interact with you and each other, setting up a conversation with you as the talking point. How they talk about you, and how you respond, gives a good impression of your work.

Think of how you might present a case study or before-and-after post. Readers will see a situation they may relate to (like that long grass), hear what you think of the task at hand, and see the solution delivered to happy customers. 

Then others may chime in, ‘Oh yes – they were very professional’, ‘Do you do rose bushes?’. And you can answer them in the spirit that shows how friendly and professional you are.

Pre-delivery preparation

By the time they read your post, your service to them may have already begun. Consider transformational coach Tony Robbins. Not only does projection of his brand of a positive, uplifting, knowledgeable and motivated person serve him well on a marketing level, but projecting that confidence also works for his process. 

The audience getting enthusiastic for his seminars goes a long way toward the success of that seminar for the individual. That motivation is part of Robbins’ product, so he is delivering from the first post you see.

In a more sober profession, you might have an accountancy firm, where relief from the anxiety of taxation is a pretty good selling point. Your social media posts could feature you with a soothing and reassuring voice just how stress-free is your approach and solution. 

Your readers might feel calmer already, relieved that they don’t have to worry about their tax – you’ve got them in safe hands. You are already delivering the goods.

Managing Expectations

Delivery must match expectations, so it pays to build the correct expectations in the prospect’s mind. There is enough time and discourse in your social media conversation with them to build an accurate impression of what your service will be like, and what it will not.

This makes good service delivery so much easier as they don’t leap to assumptions about what is included, and equips them with knowledge so that they have good questions to ask before you start. Does it include THIS, does it come with THAT?

On top of a good customer journey, this also gives you good market research. If so many customers ask for THIS, then maybe we should provide it (or find an associate who will).

After care

Once the goods are delivered, that is not the end of the customer journey. Another opportunity awaits.

People often want to maintain some kind of connection with people who have helped them – to feel part of each others’ community.

Social Media helps them to feel connected with you as they receive your next post in their feed, and even have the opportunity to comment on it to keep a conversation going.

This will do three things: It will improve their impression of the service they just received, it will keep them in contact and good spirits for the next time they need you, and they will advocate for you to friends (and other people reading your comments section).

This last part is an important part of the customer experience journey: Advocacy. Your happy customers will recommend you to more potential customers, and the cycle continues, keeping the momentum from your initial marketing efforts.

Social media can enhance your service delivery and give your customers an excellent customer journey from before you meet them to after delivery is completed.

Good social media will make your cakes taste sweeter, your service friendlier and your expertise more impressive.

We understand the overwhelm, and are here to help! If your brand or business is lacking in social media strategy or direction, it might be time to book a 15-minute strategy session with us to find out how we can support your business growth.