How To Provide Customer Support On Instagram
Instagram is one of the world’s most popular social media platform that has the power to reach a wide range of people and generate a lot of attention for a particular topic, idea, or product. For this reason, it has become a very relevant marketing tool in the world of business, with many brands seeking to jump on the platform in order to take advantage of everything it has to offer.
Why does Instagram matter for your business?
While Instagram began primarily for the purpose of sharing photographs, it now offers everything from video to shopping content, offering users the ability to follow trends, topics, and brands that appeal to them. It's also appealing to a relatively younger demographic, being most popular among generations who engage in heavy technology use.
As of October 2021, almost two-thirds of the global Instagram audience were 34 years old or younger. As an easy way to personally connect, share and engage with friends, it's become a must-have platform for of many Millennials and Gen Z.
This platform isn’t only popular with individuals, it’s also very popular among businesses, mainly for the reason that it works as an extremely effective tool in getting your brand in front of these demographics.
A whopping 73% of U.S. teens say Instagram is their preferred way to connect with businesses. For this reason, there has been a growing effort over the years among brands to be present and prolific on Instagram, as they seek to employ it as a marketing and engagement tool.
So much so, in fact, that as of late 2017, the social platform had 25 million active business accounts. With them, brands are sharing content, promoting products, engaging with users, as well as using Instagram to offer customer service.
How Do You Provide Customer Service On Instagram
As the new tool for brand communication, Instagram has quickly turned into the forefront of many businesses' customer support strategy and approach.
In this article, we'll review some of the best ways you can leverage this tool, and make the most out of your efforts to provide effective customer support on Instagram.
Quick, Personalized Responses to Customer DMs
One of the best things you can do as a business on Instagram is make a planned effort to attentively address and respond to any queries your customers may have on the platform. When your followers comment or Direct Message you a question, take the time to answer it! Given how each message and response is an opportunity to engage with a real person, you don't want to pass up on these opportunities to show why your business is one to trust and love.
Resolving issues, concerns, or customer queries with Instagram Direct Messages can build trust in your brand and be a great way to engage your customers with your profile. It takes little effort to improve their perception of your business when they can share any issues, questions or feedback directly to a brand through the Instagram’s messaging features and receive a response they find value in.
By communicating with followers directly in this way, brands like yours can effectively demonstrate a willingness and interest in interacting with their customers. It has the power to convey a powerful message in customer service, essentially showing that you value their questions, concerns, and input enough to take the time to address it directly.This can also drive brand reputability, by showing users that your business is one that is present, straightforward, and responsive. Take effort in your responses, and be sure to personalize each response!
Use Tools To Improve Your Efficiency
Image source : HootsuiteA great thing about Instagram is that its presence has allowed for hundreds of tools and solutions aimed at supporting business engagement on the platform. Because of this, it's now easier than ever to take advantage of Instagram and its business features, through these tools that make it easier to manage and automate your brand's interactions on it.
A reliable scheduling tool such as Hootsuite can truly take your business' online presence to the next level. By allowing you to get insights on best times to engage on Instagram, as well as publish straight to Instagram while managing customer support DMs in one place, your team will stay on top of things.
Scheduling tools can do a lot, from effectively notifying you of changes on your profile's engagement to automating and streamlining your responses to tags and queries. They also make customer service faster and easier in doing so, improving the overall effectiveness and success of your efforts in it.
You can also save keyboard shortcuts on Chrome while responding to customer support on any social scheduling app or social CRM tool. With a free tool like Text Blaze, you can automate customer service on Instagram by inserting canned responses to customers questions that you receive on Instagram. By automating repetitive typing for your support team with Text Blaze, you will reap the benefits of personalized, quick and thoughtful responses on Instagram.
Use The Right Kind Of Content To Connect With Instagram Customers
Platforms like Instagram exist to appeal to the social interactions between a young demographic. Your brand’s customer support needs to keep this in mind while writing responses to customer issues raised via Instagram. This might look like customer support including emojis, relatable language or hashtags in their response. This can really help your business blend in on Instagram, and make it easier for end consumers to understand and connect with what you're sharing.
While customer support for businesses traditionally sticks to professional language, formality and standardization, it isn't going to work on Instagram. We recommend that while you should stick to professional interactions and old playbooks of dealing with customers, you can learn from fun interactions by famous business accounts that are applying unique and creative approaches in connecting with their audience. If you can find a Balance in a professional tone with fun emojis and GIFs while dealing with customers, you're more likely to find the most success on Instagram when mirroring it to your brand's identity and characteristics.
Engage With Hashtags And Mentions
Tracking brand mentions and customer feedback through things like Instagram posts is another great way to increase your customer service on the platform. You can use it as a way to engage with users who have posted about you, or are posting feedback on how they feel about your business. This serves as an extremely helpful and quick way to measure and manage how your business is being perceived by users on the platform, and also gives insight into how they may be experiencing your services.
So, look out for, or better yet, follow hashtags that are relevant to your business, keep an eye on your brand mentions, and be sure to take the time to address any inquiries users are sharing through these means. This provides another unique opportunity for demonstrating brand character, showing that you are attentive enough to recognize when your brand is being talked about on the platform and are fast enough to engage with it.
Wrapping Up:
Customer support on Instagram for businesses may not always be easy or straight forward, but the benefits it can bring to your brand’s reputation are invaluable.
In fact, by diverting from traditional customer support practices, Instagram provides new ways to measure customer responsiveness through the means of new-age brand expression, clever use of hashtags and emojis. By leveraging creative expression, unique strategy and responsiveness in all that you do while representing your brand on this platform, you will ensure yourself a successful presence through personalized outreach and lasting impact.
So play it up, show the world your brand's creativity and personality, and create a customer experience like no other!
Hi there! You made it all the way down to the bottom of this article. Take a few seconds to share it.
Want to turbo charge your work with templates and snippets? Text Blaze is the fastest way to do that.