Customer Service: Writing for Social Media

Introduction

• Welcome
• How social customer care is different
• Check with your manager

1. Be Responsive

• Respond to social media contacts quickly
• Be transparent in social media
• Handle channel pivots gracefully

2. Write in a Personal, On-Brand Tone of Voice

• The brand book
• Use an informal but professional tone
• How to show empathy
• How to sign your responses
• How to use emoticons and emojis

3. How to Move the Discussion to a Private Channel

• When to move to a private channel
• Why go public again after a private exchange

4. Write Templates for Social Media Responses to Customers

• Templates vs. free text
• Make the templates easy to customize

5. How to Handle Trolls or Bandwagoners

• How to handle rude customers
• How to be helpful
• How to handle harassers

6. How to Cope with Character Limits

• Use hyperlinks to be transactional
• How to use abbreviations

7. Follow Conventional Rules of Punctuation and Grammar

• Rules you can and can't break

Conclusion

• Next steps