When modern consumers have a question or complaint concerning a brand, social media is often the first channel they turn to. This trend began when consumers realized that a complaint on social media is highly visible compared to a phone call or email, and that means businesses are more likely to respond quickly and positively.
In turn, brands quickly realized that a complaint on social media was a good opportunity to publicly demonstrate their excellent customer service, which only encouraged more people to use the channel when they had an issue that needed to be addressed. So now we’ve reached a stage where social media is widely considered the default point of contact for getting help from a business.
Any B2C brand above a certain size will receive a lot of customer queries through social media and, as the company grows, so does the difficulty of addressing that challenge. Having customer service reps manually checking social media channels for queries is simply unrealistic at that kind of scale, so it’s essential to use social media customer service software and tools.
Tip: Learn more about social media customer service best practices.
Table of Contents
Why Use a Social Media Customer Service Platform?
What Does Social Media Customer Service Software Do?
The Best Social Media Customer Service Software
How To Choose the Right Social Media Customer Service Software
Additional Considerations Regarding Social Media Customer Service Tools
Why Use a Social Media Customer Service Platform?
Imagine a modest consumer-facing business with a company brand name, perhaps a small handful of product sub-brands, and owned social media channels for each of them; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and maybe YouTube or TikTok as well.
It’s easy to see how even a small business can find itself with 10-20 individual social media accounts for all of its brands and products. Keeping track of all of the comments and queries being sent to those accounts across multiple platforms is a complex task, and if it’s a high-volume business (a CPG brand, for example) that can mean millions of customers and hundreds of queries every week.
Along with the customer queries which are directly posted to the company’s channels, there are also a lot of people talking about its brands on their own Twitter and Instagram profiles without tagging the company, and often these comments require a response.
Tip: Learn how to respond in our social media comments guide and take a look at these social media customer service examples to get inspired.
Now imagine that company starts to grow, adding more products and expanding into different markets. The number of owned social channels could soon reach triple figures, and the volume of queries can start to reach impossible levels. For the largest multi-brand global conglomerates, the challenge is staggering.
Social media customer service software is designed to address this problem, making it much easier for companies of all sizes to ensure that all complaints and queries in social media are identified and responded to promptly. There are several benefits to using social media customer service tools in this way, including increased customer satisfaction, improved brand equity, and cost efficiencies created by relieving pressure on the customer service team.
What Does Social Media Customer Service Software Do?
We’ve established the benefits of using social media customer service tools, but how do they deliver these advantages and what tasks do they actually perform? Of course, all of these platforms are different and offer unique feature sets, but these are some of the most common tasks that they all accomplish:
Monitoring for Queries and Complaints
Unified Inbox Management
Query Categorization
Routing and Workflow
Customer History and Context
Regulatory Compliance
Analytics and Reporting
Monitoring for Queries and Complaints
These tools monitor your owned social media channels for messages and comments, whether they are posted as responses to your content or sent as direct messages. They also track mentions of your company and brands in earned social, whether your company is specifically tagged or just mentioned by name. This means that wherever people post questions or complaints about your company online, you will know about it.
Tip: Learn more about social listening, and take a look at the best social media monitoring tools and the best social listening tools out there.
Unified Inbox Management
With so many queries coming from all of these different places, it can be very difficult to track and manage them. A social media customer service platform aggregates them all into a unified inbox so they can be more easily processed.
Tip: Learn more about social media management, and take a look at the best social media management tools on the market.
Query Categorization
Sorting queries into different categories, and tagging them based on their content, can help speed up processing and provide valuable insights for reporting and analytics. These tools help you do this quickly, and they increasingly use AI to automate tagging and categorization with minimal human oversight.
Tip: Learn how Meltwater uses AI, and learn more about Meltwater's AI-Powered PR Assistant, and Meltwater's AI Writing Assistant for Social Media Managers.
Routing and Workflow
No matter what size team you have handling social media customer service, it’s vital that queries and complaints are handed off to the right person, and processes are in place to ensure that each case is dealt with so that nothing falls through the cracks.
Customer History and Context
These features provide customer service agents with a detailed log of each customer's history and previous interactions with your business to offer a more personalized and context-aware customer service experience. This makes life easier for the agent, and helps the customer feel like they’re being heard.
Regulatory Compliance
By ensuring workflows and processes are correctly followed, these platforms can be configured to make sure that all legal and regulatory requirements are adhered to, as well as simply encouraging your support staff to follow best practices at all times.
Analytics and Reporting
Social media customer service generates a lot of data across every stage of the process, which can all be used to measure and improve performance. These platforms measure all kinds of KPIs, such as response times, customer satisfaction, and engagement metrics, and build reports showcasing that information, helping businesses to make data-driven decisions.
Tip: Read more about social media analytics, take a look at the best social media analytics tools, and check out Meltwater's social media analytics tool.
The Best Social Media Customer Service Software
What is the best social media customer service software on the market?
Meltwater
Salesforce Service Cloud
Zoho Desk
Zendesk Support Suite
Sprout Social
Sprinklr
Qualtrics CX for Contact Centers
Oracle Service Cloud
Meltwater
The Meltwater suite includes social media listening, engagement and analytics tools making it an ideal social media customer service platform. It provides all of the capabilities required to identify and respond to customer queries and complaints in social media, and is fully scalable, as demonstrated by its popularity with many of the world’s biggest brands.
What’s more, it offers complete integration with the Salesforce CRM platform, which means it can work seamlessly with your existing customer service infrastructure. Instead of social media customer service working in isolation from more conventional customer service channels, integrating Meltwater and Salesforce makes it simple to keep everything in sync.
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a well-known CRM platform designed to support customer service operations. It is part of the larger Salesforce ecosystem, which includes other cloud offerings for sales, marketing, and analytics.
Salesforce Service Cloud is used by a wide range of industries and businesses of all sizes to enhance their customer service and support operations. As of November 2024, Salesforce is withdrawing its Salesforce Social Studio product, which previously gave the platform social media customer service capabilities.
Going forward, Salesforce customers will be able to integrate Meltwater with Salesforce in order to deliver social media customer service.
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a cloud-based customer support and help desk software offered by Zoho Corporation, a company that provides a suite of online business software applications.
Zoho Desk is designed to help organizations effectively manage customer service operations and deliver customer support. Zoho Corporation offers a range of other cloud-based business applications.
Tip: Take a look at these Zoho Social alternatives.
Zendesk Support Suite
Zendesk Support Suite is a customer support and engagement platform from Zendesk, which provides a range of cloud-based customer service and engagement solutions.
Zendesk Support Suite is designed to help businesses manage customer inquiries and support operations efficiently. Zendesk offers additional products that can complement Zendesk Support Suite, such as Zendesk Chat, Zendesk Talk, and Zendesk Guide, providing a comprehensive customer engagement solution.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media management platform and software designed to help businesses and organizations manage their social media marketing efforts more effectively. It provides a range of tools and features for social media monitoring, engagement, and analytics, helping users to manage their social media presence and engage with their audience.
Though Sprout Social is primarily a social media marketing platform, it also offers customer service features.
Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a social media management and customer experience platform that is designed to help businesses and organizations manage their social media presence, engage with customers, and deliver a consistent and personalized customer experience across various digital channels.
Sprinklr offers a range of tools and features that support social media management, customer engagement, analytics, and marketing automation.
Qualtrics CX for Contact Centers
Qualtrics CX for Contact Centers, provided by Qualtrics, a well-known customer experience management software company, helps contact centers and customer service organizations gather customer feedback and insights, measure customer satisfaction, and improve their customer experience.
Qualtrics CX for Contact Centers is intended to help contact centers enhance the quality of customer interactions, boost customer satisfaction, and improve overall operational efficiency.
Oracle Service Cloud
Oracle Service Cloud, formerly known as Oracle RightNow, is a cloud-based customer service and support platform offered by Oracle, a well-known enterprise software provider.
This platform is designed to help businesses deliver customer service by providing a range of tools and features for managing customer interactions, automating support processes, and improving overall customer satisfaction.
How To Choose the Right Social Media Customer Service Software
Choosing the best social media customer service platform for your business is an important decision that can significantly impact your customer service operations. To make an informed choice, there are a number of key considerations you should discuss with any potential vendor.
- Does it fit your objectives?
First and most importantly, what are your business objectives, and what limitations or special requirements need to be factored into the decision? For example, are you looking to enhance response times, reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, and/or gather customer insights? - Platform integration
Platform integration is a big deal, especially for larger organizations, as it’s unlikely that you’ll find a single platform that can manage enterprise-level social media engagement and customer service. Ensure that the customer service platform can integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, including CRM software, marketing tech stack, and any other customer service solutions you may be using. - Does it support your main social channels?
Be sure that the platform supports the social media channels where your customers are most active. It should cover all the relevant platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and any region-specific networks, such as those in the Asian market. If you are unsure about where your audience is most active, use consumer insights tools and customer intelligence software. - Can the software grow with you?
Consider first whether the platform is robust enough to handle your organization’s current requirements, but whether it can grow with your business. You might need additional features or the ability to accommodate a larger team as your customer service needs expand, and changing vendors can be complicated after a platform has become embedded in your tech stack. - Is it user-friendly?
Is the social media customer service software you’re considering user-friendly and easy for all of your team to perform their required tasks? Some solutions look great on paper and offer all of the necessary features, but if they have clunky and cumbersome user interfaces, they can be a major drag on productivity as your team struggles to make them work. - Does it include AI functionalities?
There’s no question that AI is changing the way we work with all kinds of business software, so you should investigate if and how your vendor is taking advantage of the technology in its platform. Tools which offer AI functionality will help your teams work faster and more effectively than those which do not, so it’s really a no-brainer! - Does it allow for customizations?
Every business is unique and has its own specific requirements, so you shouldn’t choose a platform that is rigid and inflexible. Look for a platform that allows for customization, such as creating templates for common responses and building flexible workflows that match your own business requirements. - How robust are analytics and reporting capabilities?
Robust analytics and reporting capabilities are crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your social media customer service efforts. Ensure the platform offers the metrics that matter most to your business, such as response times and customer satisfaction, and that it has the flexibility to work with your own measurement and reporting needs. - Data Security & Compliance
Finally, consider data security and regulatory compliance. Remember that when dealing with customer service issues, your organization will be handling consumers’ personal data, and that in most countries there are now strict rules about how that data should be safeguarded. The platform should have robust security measures to protect customer data and ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
Additional Considerations Regarding Social Media Customer Service Tools
Apart from the features and functionality of the social media customer service platform, there are a few other important issues that need to be addressed when making your selection:
- Cost
Obviously cost is of vital importance, as you need to be sure that the platform fits within your budget and is capable of delivering an acceptable level of ROI. Evaluate the cost of the platform, including setup fees, subscription costs, and any additional charges for extra features or user licenses. - Customer support
Customer support is just as important for your business as it is for your customers, so make sure you’re comfortable with the level of support offered by whichever vendors you are considering. Whether there are problems with the platform, or your users are simply struggling to make things work as they should, you need to be sure that they can get quick and effective help when they need it. - Implementation
Equally, when deploying a new social media customer service tool, you should be confident that the vendor is capable of managing the implementation, training, and onboarding process smoothly so that you can start reaping the benefits of the new system as soon as possible. The problem of “shelf-ware” is common in the software industry; too often customers invest in new platforms only to struggle with the implementation phase and end up locked into a contract for a solution they’re not using.
Ultimately, the best social media customer service platform for your business will align with your specific needs, budget, and long-term goals. It's essential to conduct thorough research, possibly engage in demonstrations or trials, and consult with your customer service team to make an informed decision.
To learn more about how Meltwater can help you deliver world-class social media customer service, book a demonstration by filling in the form below:
