The hours when your audience is talking to your brand has a big influence on the hours you yourself need to be active. This is typically highly dependent on the industry you're in. The first step in understanding this is by monitoring when your community is active to help you define your framework for social customer service. Notice any peaks during the day? Make sure you are providing customer service during these hours.
An important question that pops up is, "Do I need to provide customer service during the weekend?" If that's when your community is most active, the answer is, "Yes, of course!" On the other hand, if you notice inflow is rather low on Saturday, and especially on Sunday, you can either choose to put someone on standby (and check the social inbox at regular intervals) or exclude the weekend from your business hours. Just make sure you openly communicate this to your customers.
As an example and inspiration, these are the business hours of three brands from the telecom, banking, and travel industries.
Here's a recap of the steps you should take to determine your business hours:
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Monitor when your community is active.
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Determine whether you need to provide customer service during the weekend.
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Notice a change in workload? Adjust your business hours!
Want to learn more about how to determine your business hours and find alternatives to how you can deliver top-notch customer support, at all times? Read all about it here.
This blog post originally appeared on the Engagor blog.