3. Define measurable customer service goals

[shaownhasan]

Social customer care is a tough nut to crack for many businesses. The discipline sits at the intersection of service and brand marketing, complicated workflows and strategies. According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, only 8% of social marketers believe themselves to be leaders in customer care on social media, likely because the function lacks a clear owner.

A stat call-out that says, “8% of social marketers believe self employed data themselves to be leaders in customer care on social media, likely because the function lacks a clear owner.”

If social customer care responsibilities span multiple departments within your organization, identify the team leaders who implement those cross-functional workflows. Use a responsibility assignment matrix—like the RACI model, for example—to create clarity around your internal processes before attempting to execute your strategy.

Come together with the rest of your key stakeholders to agree on a list of broad objectives for your customer service strategy, then align around targeted SMART goals for performance measurement.

In case you’re not familiar, SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-sensitive. While each of these characteristics are important, you’ll devote some extra energy to identifying the customer service metrics that will determine the success of your strategy—like average first reply time, response rate, etc. After all, what gets measured, gets done.

Create a shared customer service report to track your team’s performance against their new goals, and set a cadence for routine progress updates. This will ensure accountability and help identify issues early on.