In the age of instant communications, customer relationship management (CRM) is critical from an inbound marketing perspective. Monitoring social media helps you understand what your customers are saying, and what type of experience they’ve had with your organization.
If you’ve provided exceptional customer service to a customer, it’s likely that they’re tweeting about how happy they are with your product or service. Positive customer testimonials are a powerful marketing tool, regardless of where the testimonial is provided.
On the other hand, if a customer is disappointed, it’s even more likely that their anger is going to show up in a Facebook or Twitter post. That’s another reason why monitoring social media is so very important.
Let’s say that you own a restaurant, and that you communicate weekly specials through your Facebook page (in addition to your other inbound marketing strategies). A lousy review of your restaurant on your Facebook page by a disgruntled diner is not going to help you sell the weekly prix fixe offering that you post to Facebook. Now, we’re not advocating scrubbing of posts on your Facebook wall that are negative, but perhaps you need to publicly engage the reviewer, and offer to rectify the situation. People will forgive or overlook a poor review if you’ve admitted a mistake, and offered to fix the problem.
By monitoring social media, it’s fairly easy to turn a negative into a positive. Stay on top of what your customers are saying, and most importantly, engage with them. That’s what true customer service and “word of mouth advertising” in the digital age is all about.
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