In the last few years, Instagram has become one of the preferred platforms for product discovery among customers and people spend a considerable amount of time in-app. This causes the demand for Instagram customer service, so having an Instagram presence, it’s crucial to optimize your profile for customer service.
The days when people used phone calls to solve customer inquiries are long gone. People want to get in touch with brands to get answers to their questions on the platforms they use often. With the growing popularity of Instagram, when people spend a considerable amount of time in-app, it has become an important element of social media customer service.
Moreover, people love using Instagram for brand communication which highlights the importance of providing customer service on this platform.
The Importance of Providing Customer Service on Instagram
To understand the importance of providing customer service on Instagram, we need to walk through several statistics.
First, Instagram has a solid user base of 2 billion monthly visitors and 90% of them follow at least one business profile on the platform. Moreover, it’s said that over 150 million users have a conversation with brands in-app.
Second, not only do people use Instagram for communicating with brands, but they also expect to get their requests solved. Otherwise, 50% of people claim that it lowers their brand loyalty if the social media complaint remains without reaction.
Last, more and more brands start providing customer service on Instagram and people find it as a new norm, so it becomes a must for brands who aim at fighting for the same audience.
Now that you understand the importance of providing customer service on Instagram, here are effective ways to optimize your Instagram profile for customer service.
1. Write about your customer service in the bio
There are a lot of benefits of social media care, but it may make no sense if your followers don’t know that you keep track of their requests and do your best to provide them with prompt replies. People don’t want to feel ghosted and when it takes days or weeks to hear back from your company, they simply lose interest in your business.
Thus, it’s important to be straightforward and make the most out of your Instagram bio as it’s the first thing people see when visiting your profile. How? Explain to people how to get in touch with your company via Instagram.
Here come several ideas on what to include to your Instagram bio if you provide customer service in-app:
- “For customer requests, slide into the DM’s”
- “DM for customer support inquiries”
- “Need support? Contact our customer service team”
2. Include various contact buttons to your profile
Instagram customer care is not just about monitoring brand mentions, replying to comments, or having conversations via direct messages. People also use Instagram to find more information about their favorite companies which means they may want to get more communication channels.
When having a business Instagram profile, you have an opportunity to add various contact options below your bio section as buttons and therefore help your visitors and followers choose their preferred communication channel to get in touch with your customer service reps. Thus, it’s a good idea to include contact buttons that allow interested people to call you or write an email.
3. Link back to your dedicated contact page
If you have a business website and you use it actively for your business goals, it’s more likely that you also have a contact page with all relevant information on how to contact your customer service team. Optimizing your Instagram profile for customer service, you can also make good use of clickable links and link back to your dedicated contact page where interested Instagammers could learn more about your company or get in touch with your customer support team.
Not only does it help to reduce the number of inquiries you receive on Instagram, but it also increases customer satisfaction as worried customers get a chance to proceed with their requests on their own path without waiting for the response from your social media team.
Want to bring your business to the next level? Feature customer testimonials on your contact page to set an example for customers and therefore get more Google reviews which you can repurpose for your Instagram feed. It serves as a social proof and people have fewer concerns which means fewer questions for your customer support.
4. Hire a freelance social media moderator
It takes time and effort to train an effective customer support team which knows how to solve customer inquiries without hurting brand reputation. When you lack in-house staff and you aim at hiring freelance social media moderators, it’s important to provide them with ready-made scenarios on how to deal with angry customers within your brand voice.
That’s why it can be useful to find a professional presentation design company that can take care of a presentation which includes all important information on how to provide Instagram customer care and therefore maximize support efforts. Moreover, you can update and reuse this file over and over again when you onboard new moderators or customer service reps.
5. Enable quick and auto replies for direct messages
Modern customers are spoiled with the quality of services companies provide to keep their audiences hooked and engaged. When it comes to social media customer service, 64% of users expect to get a reply within one hour and some companies meet these expectations. This means you need to optimize your Instagram profile and do your best to reduce response time.
The good news is that Instagram has the solution – quick replies for Direct Messages. The in-built feature that allows marketers and customer support team members create pre-canned replies to frequently-asked questions and send them automatically. What is more, you can use auto replies to indicate the estimated time of response if customers reach out to you when your team doesn’t work. As a result, users know what to expect and they wait for a prompt resolution without hurting your brand reputation.
6. Provide proactive Instagram customer support
Nobody wants to deal with angry customers and ruin brand reputation so some companies take the first step and invest time and effort into providing proactive customer support. This means you include all relevant information about your business and products on your profile so that followers could find replies on their own. FAQs, video testimonials, chatbots – are just a few of ways on how to help Instagrammers get excellent customer service.
However, you need to do market research and analyze your audience inside out. And if you want to provide proactive customer service and understand your audience better before requests occur, it’s a smart idea to create feedback emails and ask your followers if they want to participate. You can send emails to existing customers or write a series of posts about your customer satisfaction survey on social media and invite interested followers to sign up for your newsletter, giving them small perks like exclusive access to premium content, discounts, or freebies.
About the Author
Val Razo is a freelance SMM consultant with 10+ years of experience who helps SMBs establish and maintain a strong social media presence. She also contributes to digital marketing blogs and she wrote for Buffer, Hubspot, Wordstream.
