Make sure you have the right people working with your social media management tool
Social media management tools typically offer only a limited number of user accounts in their different pricing plans. Although you can often buy as many user accounts as you want, you should nevertheless choose your users wisely. It's very useful to have a wide range of departments using your social media management tool, including:
- Customer Service agents (the ones in charge of social media)
- Customer Service team leaders (to follow up on team performance)
- Marketing Executives (to follow up on campaigns)
- Corporate Communication (to respond to delicate corporate level questions and remarks)
- Crisis Communication (to be notified when a crisis is lurking)
- Experts, like product developers (to answer more technical questions)
Assign messages to your experts
Some of these users will mainly use the social media management tool for analytics and reporting. However, others will also use it to respond to individual messages. Customer Service agents typically manage all messages that are posted about their brand across social web. If they come across a post that is interesting to another department or would be better answered by a specialist colleague, they can easily assign it. That is why it is useful to ensure that all of your users are familiar with your social media management tool and have ready access to it. Once a message is assigned to them, they receive an email notification and can easily log in to receive the entire context they need such as important notes by colleagues or previous conversations with the contact. Of course, they will also be able to reply to the message without needing the password of your brand's social profiles.
Automatically route social media messages
Does all this assigning sound like a lot of work? Well, it certainly does not have to be. You can automatically route or assign the right messages to the right people and have them notified via email. This automatic routing of social media messages utilizes filters, through which you can, for example, automatically assign:
- Messages by journalists to PR
- Messages about delicate corporate issues to Corporate Communication
- Foreign language messages to a colleague fluent in that language
Keywords, language, country, amount of Twitter followers: these are all examples of filters you can use to automatically route the right message to the right person. You can also keep track of everything that is being assigned to other users, in case they are absent. You can then re-assign the message to someone else or re-route the message to the general message inbox.
Automatically routing messages to the right people has two major advantages:
- It saves Customer Service agents an enormous amount of time and effort, making their workflow more efficient and above all much more effective.
- Since non-Customer Service users will only receive messages that matter to them, they will be able to react far more quickly. They will then be able to stand out because of their swift response or better yet avert a crisis altogether.
Use the full potential of your social media management tools. All of your company departments can and should be using them. Automatically dividing the work and routing the messages will stimulate collaboration and vastly boost your overall efficiency.