How to use Instagram for social media customer service? Simple tips

Today, every successful brand has its own profile in the social media. They use it to advertise products, sell it, connect with customers and perform other actions that they can do only in the social media. In easy words, they use Instagram as social media customer service, so when customer opens your profile, he can find everything he needs.

However, creating a profile with your brand`s name is not enough. You need to know some specific tips that will help you to use Instagram profile as social media customer service. Get ready, because here we will show you such tips.

1. Switch to an Instagram business profile

When you open any brand`s profile on Instagram, you can see a specific mark in their bio (words like “brand”, “clothing shop” or something else). If you see one of these phrases in profile`s bio, it means that this profile is switched from usual Instagram`s account to a business profile.

If you will be working with a business profile, you will be able to promote your posts to other users and have access to Instagram Insights. You can add contact information like email address or phone number, so people will be able to get in touch with you.

2. Use the right tool for the job

If you spend most part of the time working with the social media, it doesn`t mean that you don`t need any extra tools. We highly recommend you to use “Search&Repost” tool from Late service. Our team has tested it, and it showed us good results. You are able to manage comments on your Instagram posts, so you won`t miss any comment that will come from other user(s).

If you afraid that you could miss comments from older posts, don`t worry – every comment will go through “Search&Repost”, so you won`t miss anything.

3. Connect your Instagram DMs to Facebook

This current tip is important only if you are working with both platforms: Facebook and Instagram. You can consolidate your messages by sending your Instagram DMs to your Facebook Messenger Inbox.

If you`re managing your Instagram comments and direct messages from your desktop, it will be good for you to create a list of pre-written answers to some of the more common questions that come your way. However, don`t copy and paste your replies every time you need to answer. Change your answers, orientate on customers and, of course, address the customer by name.

By using Instagram as social media customer service, you create personal connection with your audience. However, you must be sure that they are interested in what you are doing.

4. Speak your customer`s language

Customers hate when marketers and brand owners are talking chatting with them like robots. They use similar phrases, and none of these phrases show their real emotions. If you want to be in a good relationship with the customers, you should speak their language. If they use emojis and smiles in their comments, you should do the same. If they are writing short phrases like “Great!” or “Thank you!”, you should use the same phrases in your answers.

Of course, if you have a huge audience and every post has thousands of comments, you shouldn`t respond to every comment. Answer to the longest comments, and put likes to others that are repeating. Your task here is to show that you are not skipping people`s comments and they are really important for you.

5. Move conversations to a private channel

Like Twitter, Instagram gives you an opportunity to send direct messages to other users. If people want to contact you, they need to send you a message, and you will reply to it. However, in some cases you will need to move your conversation to a private channel. There are three main reasons for this:

• When you need to protect customer`s private information
• When you need more words to solve an issue
• When it`s a unique problem of circumstance

Of course, you should always analyze the situation and decide whether you need to use your private channel or not.