Over the last year, I’ve focused on incorporating social media in various business strategies by combining my customer service/ user experience background with my social media background.

These are two angles that go hand-in-hand in more ways than we can imagine, and this can not only help you take your business to a new level but help calm and better various business obstacles you may be facing.

There is no question that social media is a powerful customer service tool. We can leverage most platforms for free (in most cases) to create unique user experiences for our audience and give our audience the answer to their questions before they even have to ask.

By being proactive and leveraging social media to address questions, educate & create a loyal community, this can in turn also lead to a better experience for your team members.

Let’s review an example from a client in June 2018.

It’s quite simple actually, and I’ve done this strategy and something very similar for many clients for various concerns that they had, the key here is to be strategic and open-minded.

The client’s concern:

A Startup that’ s growing fast (obviously not a problem.) Only two team members and they are working overtime every day answering emails that they receive. They said that about 80% of their emails received are questions regarding the same 3–4 frequently asked questions regarding their best-selling products.

They also mentioned that these frequently asked questions were on their website under their FAQ section. I looked into this, and it was true, all of these answers were available on their website.

They were working way too much overtime addressing those emails. They also felt that time spent working overtime would have been best fulfilling orders. In any case, they wanted to find a way to reduce the number of email inquiries received.

In their original order fulfilling process, they provided a link to the FAQS in the confirmation email and a follow-up email.

What we did to assist:

We create a Facebook album on their business page where each image in the album was allocated to one frequently asked question, and the comment was the answer.

We went over hosting Facebook lives with them, and they started to host one weekly Facebook live addressing frequently asked questions.

We create a Pinterest board for their FAQ’s and continuously added pins to answer their FAQ’s.

We added a note in their email signature advising their customers and prospective buyers that if they are looking for an answer regarding the various questions, they can find the answers on Facebook or Pinterest and provided the links. We made the text more prominent since the previous link to their FAQ’s wasn’t very noticeable.

For clients who may not be present on social media? We took the same content and started to email two FAQ answers by email per week.

We also created a pop-up for their website that directs new buyers and to view a newly created landing page where they will find videos of the business owners addressing the frequently asked questions.

The pre-recorded videos used on their landing page were also posted on Facebook and their website.

The Conclusion:

When we first met and started implementing this strategy in June, they were getting about 50–60 emails per day regarding these questions and after four months that was down to 8–12 per day. That’s a generous difference.

Was this strategy perfect? Could we have done anything differently? We could have visited various angles and tried so many various tools on social media to help, however these simple changes that were implemented and actioned consistently helped a business improve a significant concern. They were now able to allocate their time to what they felt was more important and let’s not forget, create a positive user experience.

This client is a great example of what can happen when you create a positive user experience for your audience with the help of social media.

If you want to start leveraging social media to create positive user experiences for your audience, take small steps and apply them on a consistent basis. Not sure where to get started?

Answer the following questions to identify an area of concern in your business or an area where you could improve the user experience.

- Are we receiving emails with the same questions on a regular basis? What about calls?

- Is information about our products and services easily accessible?

- What about website traffic? How many monthly visits does the content that should be viewed, receives on our website?

- How could we assist our team members by leveraging various social media platforms and tools?

- Have we received similar ongoing concerns from our end users or customers?

As you’ve seen in this article, social media can significantly help you improve various aspects of your business from creating better user experiences to your customer service efforts and even alleviating various business hurdles you experience. Now it’s time to get creative and do the same for your business.