{"id":634,"date":"2016-12-03T10:20:09","date_gmt":"2016-12-03T10:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webigg.com\/blog\/?p=634"},"modified":"2018-12-08T12:01:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T12:01:51","slug":"create-a-process-for-monitoring-and-responding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webigg.com\/blog\/create-a-process-for-monitoring-and-responding\/","title":{"rendered":"Create a Process for Monitoring and Responding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who owns the dialog?<\/strong>\u00a0This task usually falls to customer service personnel, but many organizations are relegating it to the social media staff. The owner of the dialogue has to be comfortable with technology across a variety of touch points.<\/p>\n

Some organizations allow a wide range of employees to monitor and respond to social mentions, particularly if the organizations are trying to create a more personal experience. There are arguments for both types of ownership, but the only thing that really matters is that the person responding is trained, level-headed, technology-savvy, and is sensitive to customers\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n

What are you monitoring?<\/strong>\u00a0You are listening for mentions about your brand, organization, and company. But this extends to your URL, your location, your managers, officers, and even employees. Imagine all of the possible customer touch points, and in all likelihood, someone will be socially engaging about that experience online.<\/p>\n

Go a step further and look at misspellings of your company name or URL. If you have time, monitor your competitors as well \u2014 smaller organizations, with limited staff, should keep a tighter focus.<\/p>\n

Decide on the channels and link them to your service.<\/strong>\u00a0You have the basic channels \u2014 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google +, Pinterest, and, perhaps, LinkedIn. However, for many of the monitoring platforms I have listed above, you can add more than these.<\/p>\n

Remember your brand reputation can propagate across the web from almost any starting point. So the more proactive you are, the quicker you can guide the conversation.<\/p>\n

Develop a hierarchy of responses.<\/strong>\u00a0I recently advised a large member-based organization. It was responding to social dialogue and criticism \u2014 compliments and complaints \u2014 with a single, canned response to contact the social manager via email.<\/p>\n

The organization is correcting this by implementing a customer service platform that allows for collaborative customer-specific dialogue across the organization, and a single point-of-contact response to that customer. It\u2019s a sophisticated system, good for a large company.<\/p>\n

But all organizations, large and small, should implement a hierarchy of responses to deal with incoming dialogue in an organized and consistent manner. Part of your online reputation, after all, hinges on a uniform perception of your customer responsiveness. Using guidelines for appropriate responses, and how they will be escalated, will keep that uniformity intact.<\/p>\n

Once you have the people, process, and platform in place to monitor the dialogue, implement basic, company-wide guidelines to assure that the conversation doesn\u2019t get too heated. Remember, no company ever won an argument with a customer.<\/p>\n