4 Ways to Incorporate Social Media into Your IT Support

4WaysSocialMediaBLOG458877887Let’s face it, Facebook is by far the most popular mobile app, with Instagram and Twitter not too far behind. It’s not surprising that these social media sites have become a prime location for end users to voice their technical questions and frustrations or reviews of organizations, brands, products or even your IT service desk.

It’s easy to let your marketing department take the lead on social media, but they are not the IT service desk team, and they don’t have the technical background that your team does to give the customers the outstanding answers they should receive. To help your organization avoid becoming a victim of a complaint gone unanswered or an FAQ ignored, here are a few ways you can incorporate your organization’s social media channels into your technical support.

  1. Make a team member available to keep an eye on your company’s Twitter stream. Twitter is an easy place for customers to submit short questions/comments to your team. By having a dedicated technical support person available to Twitter, your team and organization as a whole will look agile and timely, showing customers that you are paying attention to the places your customers frequent the most.
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  2. Utilize YouTube to answer frequently asked questions. Sometimes the easiest way to fix an error or mistake is to actually see how someone else resolved it. With very little video production and screen-recording software, you can create a step-by-step demonstration of answers to FAQs that your customers can visit time and time again.
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  3. Keep your customers regularly updated. Is the system down? Did you make an update that is causing some issues? Let your customers know as soon as possible with an announcement across social channels. Use social media to keep customers updated and provide them with time scales and any additional information they may need to know as you progress to a resolution.
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  4. Promote your technical support through social media channels. As a customer, sometimes it’s hard to figure out the right number to call for a particular question. All it takes is a simple reminder (in 140 characters or less) to let customers know the best place to go to get the answer they are looking for. Maybe even consider getting your IT help desk team a Twitter handle of its own.
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With social media, it’s important to remember that your fans, followers and customers expect a response within 30 minutes to one hour of their post on your social channel. Even if you are searching for details on their question or comment, reply to them immediately and let them know you are looking into it. Social channels are more than just a place for your customers to vent their frustrations; they give the customer greater transparency into your IT agility and give your service desk employees greater reach.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doron Gordon is a successful entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Samanage. Prior to founding Samanage, Doron was a co-founder and VP of sales and marketing at Continuity Software, a leading provider of disaster recovery and high availability management solutions. Earlier, Doron was a senior manager at BMC Software, a global leader in IT management software. He was also the founder and CEO at Always-On Software, an innovative application service provider. Follow him on Twitter and the Samanage blog.

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