Apps for Managing Social Media in Customer Service

For customer service professionals, social media sites offer an easy way to reach out to customers and interact with them on an informal level. If your company uses multiple social tools to handle customer service, however, keeping track of each one can be a challenge. To streamline the management of your social media tools, you can take advantage of apps that create a centralized portal for publishing and tracking brand reputation.

One of the biggest challenges in social media customer service management is keeping track of all accounts. For customer service departments that publish updates and answer questions on multiple accounts, it can be difficult to ensure that all posted content is on message. Apps like Sprout gather all profiles into a single location so you can monitor content across all of your company's profiles. Sprout offers a single-stream inbox, which allows you to see and respond to all your customer questions from a single location. It also includes scheduled publishing, which helps you ensure that each of your accounts is updated regularly. If you work with a customer service team, Sprout enables you to turn a message into a support-desk ticket that remains active until the right team member responds.

Another popular app for managing multiple social media accounts is HootSuite, which is compatible with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and WordPress, among others. Like Sprout, HootSuite enables you to schedule posts and get a big-picture overview of each of your accounts. It also allows you to hold conversations with other team members, manage collaboration, and set specific access to different people. HootSuite's mobile apps make it easy to manage your customer service activity from any device.

When it comes to social media, not all customers go directly to the company; instead, they post complaints on their personal accounts. According to a recent story from Action News 5 in Memphis, monitoring brand reputation is an equally important part of customer service management on social media. Because content on sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook is often visible to the public, negative comments about your brand can have a serious impact. By responding quickly to negative feedback, however, you can build a reputation as a caring, responsive company.

While HootSuite and Sprout both provide analytical functions, many companies require a more robust form of reputation management. Apps like Salesforce Marketing Cloud provide a comprehensive way to stay on top of your brand image. Salesforce Marketing Cloud uses Radian6 to track brand mentions, analyze conversations, and monitor customer engagement across a range of social platforms.

By investing in apps that help manage your social media presence, your company can create a tailored, effective customer service strategy. Most apps save time and increase collaboration, which results in a unified message and an improved brand reputation.

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