Yomego guide explains social media benefits

Yomego has released a guide entitled 'How to Use Social Media to Revolutionise Your Customer Service', which is free to download from the company's website.

Many brands now use social media as part of a customer engagement strategy - to listen and respond to feedback.

Steve Richards, managing director of Yomego and author of the guide, argues that the smart brands are creating customer communities as part of a customer service strategy as well as their marketing strategy.

The guide gives examples of ways brands can use customer communities.

They can be used to provide a way for customers to 'self-serve' (find answers to common problems) or help each other, taking a burden off the customer service team (if a question cannot be answered straight away, a live chat function accessible from the site, or a direct message function, means the customer gets their problem resolved promptly.

Customer communities can also be used to see what is proving popular and what is not; to communicate a single message to multiple customers; to listen in on discussions about products and services and get valuable feedback; and to involve customers in product development.

Finally, customer communities can help create a culture of openness that customers reward with loyalty.

Richards gives advice to brands considering a customer community under the following subheads: creating an easy-to-use and well designed site; resourcing a community; taking on board (and not censoring) negative comments; listening and responding quickly; rewarding valuable contributors; how to react when you get it wrong; being prepared for the long haul; using the community in conjunction with other services; integrating it to other social media tools; tracking the impact of the community on your brand reputation; personalising responses; and tools to consider on the site (such as chat/DM functions, FAQs, forums and incentive schemes).

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