12 Social Media Tools For Customer Service

Today, social media is the future of customer service. The growing number of users clearly shows that social media giants such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc., have become more than emergent platforms for advertising and marketing.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try to take your business to new heights, you can no longer run away from social media. It is and will be, for a very long time, an essential part of marketing a business online and now part of customer service. Increasingly, today, they are key channels through which customers search for and get customer service.

According to research, by 2023, more than 90% of businesses are predicted to leverage the power of social media for better customer service.

Challenges in Social Customer Service Tools

Social media customer service tools are now indispensable for handling customer inquiries, but their implementation comes with challenges that can undermine their effectiveness if not addressed. The main hurdles include integration difficulties, managing public interactions, and ensuring proper platform alignment with business needs.

Technological Barriers to Social Customer Service Tools

Social customer service software often faces limitations that impact how well they function within an organization.

• Integration Struggles: Many businesses struggle to integrate social media platforms with existing systems like CRM tools. Agents may lack comprehensive customer data without smooth integration, resulting in slower response times and less personalized support.
• Reporting Limitations: Platforms often fail to provide actionable insights. Weak analytics and reporting features prevent businesses from understanding critical metrics like resolution times and customer sentiment, ultimately hindering continuous improvement.
• Scalability Issues: Some platforms fail to scale effectively as customer interactions increase. Increased demand can result in missed messages or delayed responses, deteriorating service quality.

Challenges with Public Conversations

Managing customer conversations on public forums like social media requires finesse. These conversations are often visible to everyone, which can create additional pressure.

• Risk to Brand Reputation: Negative comments or complaints on social media can escalate quickly, leading to a public relations issue. A delayed or poor response can fuel further dissatisfaction and harm the brand's reputation.
• Handling Emotional Exchanges: Social media interactions tend to amplify emotions. Agents need to manage these situations with empathy and professionalism to prevent the conversation from spiraling.
• Privacy vs. Transparency: While social media encourages open dialogue, it's crucial to handle sensitive customer information discreetly. Knowing when to move a public discussion to a private channel is vital for maintaining trust and privacy.

“One way to streamline customer service is through integrating AI chatbots with human support on social platforms. AI is excellent for handling routine questions like order updates or FAQs, which lets human agents focus on more challenging or more sensitive issues. One of our retail clients used AI on their Twitter account during a holiday sale to answer common questions, like store hours or tracking orders. It kept response times quick while freeing up their team to deal with more complex customer needs. This reduced response times from hours to minutes while ensuring their team could quickly step in for more nuanced concerns.

It’s essential to prioritize fast and authentic responses. Customers expect quick social media responses but also value genuine interactions. It’s good to set clear response time goals for each platform. I worked with a team that aimed to respond to all social inquiries within 30 minutes, and they used tools to bring all their messages into one place. Assigning them to the right agents made things much more manageable and kept customers happy.

Keep an eye on where your customers are spending their time. More people are using platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp for support, so looking at where your audience is most active can provide new insight. Checking in on engagement metrics and customer feedback regularly helps you adjust your approach. A good balance is AI for quick answers and human interaction for complex issues. Using platform-specific strategies can turn social media into one of your best customer service tools.” -V. Frank Sondors, Founder of Salesforge.

Don’t know how to use social media for customer service effectively? Here are the top 12 great social media tools for you to use now for better customer service.

1. SproutSocial

SproutSocial is an all-in-one platform for effective social media management and helps businesses build meaningful and lasting relationships with their customers. SproutSocial posts and schedules messages to different social media platforms through multiple profiles.

It is one of the best tools for collaborating with team members and assigning tasks among them to ensure the respective team members deal with each message.

Collaborating with team members is an often overlooked feature of social media tools for customer service. Still, whether you want to manage deadlines or simply send your employees a text message survey, these tools save time and money by streamlining tasks requiring much more time and effort.

SproutSocial can also be integrated with many leading social platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Salesforce, UserVoice, etc., to easily manage all customer support, relationships and interactions through a single dashboard.

The best part of SproutSocial is its third-party integration,n which makes it easy to turn a single tweet into a help desk ticket and send it to an appropriate team member with just a few clicks.

2. Respond

Respond, previously known as Respondly, is Buffer's social customer service and audience engagement tool. It allows you to monitor your Twitter account(s) for DMs, @mentions, keyword searches and reporting.

Respond is a perfect tool for exceptional customer service. Its collaboration features enhance team support, making it easier for larger teams to collaborate on the platform and tackle conversations hassle-free.

Respond has been rightly described as the social customer service software for support teams. If you want to take your social customer service to the next level, Respond is the one!

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a perfect management tool for publishing, workflow features, engagement, analytics, and campaigns. It can be used to manage campaigns using a single dashboard. It can be integrated with 25+ social networks. The dashboard can be customized to show the needed streams precisely and can also be used to schedule content across multiple platforms.

Using the all-in-one dashboard, you can facilitate audience engagement. You can assign permission levels to team members, create and assign tasks and approve scheduled content. Through a single dashboard, any team member can respond promptly to messages, comments and mentions. Quickly responding to the customer is the key to successful business today.

According to a survey, 82% of customers agreed that they have stopped doing business with the respective company because of a negative customer service experience.

The other interesting feature is the power to target your posts and share content with customers based on demographic details, current location and language. It’ll help you reach and communicate with customers and prospects in an effective and innovative way. Businesses use generative AI solutions to create engaging content for better results.

4. HubSpot

HubSpot’s social media management tool is versatile and easy to use. The platform includes social media publishing, reporting, and listening capabilities under one roof. 

With HubSpot, you can streamline your social media monitoring. Set up keyword monitoring streams to track and promptly respond to mentions of your brand or specific products. This feature is a time-saver, especially when addressing potential issues before they escalate. 

You can also receive email alerts so your team is immediately notified of specific mentions. Most importantly, you can connect HubSpot to your customer service database so you can get extra context behind each social mention and profile and prioritize messages accordingly.  

Another note-worthy feature is HubSpot’s analytics. The platform delivers both network-specific and cross-network reports. It allows you to monitor a wide selection of metrics, from YouTube subscriber growth to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter interactions. 

4. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a one-stop-shop for effective social media management and monitoring. It’s used to view and respond to customer messages, comments, and mentions on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

LiveAgent stores each message, comment, and mention as a support ticket, making it easy to organize and respond to all customer messages. Each ticket can be assigned to a different support team member automatically or re-assigned in just a few clicks.

One of the best features LiveAgent offers is keyword monitoring on Twitter. For example, if you choose to track the keyword “LiveAgent,” all Tweets containing the word LiveAgent will be automatically fetched and pushed into your dashboard as a ticket.

This makes monitoring what’s being said about your business easy, even if you’re not explicitly mentioned using the @ tag.

LiveAgent supports over 40 third-party integrations, including PipeDrive and Nicereply, making managing your customer’s data, relationships, and interactions through a single dashboard easy.

Try LiveAgent’s free 14-day trial today

5. Rignite

Rignite is a social media management tool with a set of amazing functionalities that will save you a ton of time and help you get a much better return and grow your business. It offers rich social media management, monitoring, goal-oriented marketing and analytics tools. You can stay organized and on top of everything by creating marketing campaigns and handling multiple social media activities through a single tool.

It is suitable for small to mid-sized businesses and can be synced with multiple social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Whenever any user interacts with your brand or vice versa, it’s in the Rignite activity feed. This lets you keep an eye on whatever people say related to your brand and directly address each interaction in real time.

When any notification comes, a team member can reply directly to the user without leaving their screen. This feature ensures that each customer service problem is resolved and nothing goes off the track.

If you want to improve customer service in business that will coordinate well with social media teams, Rignite is the solution!

6. Sparkcentral

Sparkcentral is a customer service tool that allows you to communicate with your customers across multiple social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, in real-time. It has in-app messaging for team members so that they can focus on social media to handle and resolve customer’s issues.

The only key motive of Sparkcentral is to provide exceptional customer service for businesses of all sizes. All the customer interactions are directed to a single feed, and those messages are sent to any available customer service rep to ensure no customers are missed!

It offers highly bespoke customer service to address the customer’s issue best. Customer service reps can access customers’ conversation history,y which helps resolve the problem easily. There are also options to label your high-value customers with tags like ‘Platinum Customer,’ ‘VIP,’ etc.

Sparkcentral makes it easy for your customers to reach you and offer fantastic service regardless of how they contact you.

7. Mention

Mention is an easy social media monitoring tool that helps to enhance brand awareness, generate leads, improve reputation and build worthy relationships on social media. It also monitors the web and thus informs you every time anyone mentions your brand, name or target keywords. You also get daily summary alerts, which show you the mentions for any particular day. Through this tool, get mention alerts as they happen and instantly respond from within the Mention dashboard.

Today, in this cutthroat competition, tracking what people say about you or your business online is vital. With this tool, you can resolve a customer’s issue or complaint even before it escalates. You can even track your competitors' names, which benefits your business.

8. Social Studio

Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Social Studio leverages social listening to spot potential customer service issues. You get a complete overview of whatever people are talking to and about you by integrating with the brand’s social media channels.

With Social Studio, you can build more meaningful relationships with customers. Exploit social conversations to analyze, listen, publish, and engage with your customers and prospects on a one-to-one basis. Utilize the client portal to streamline customer interactions and enhance service delivery.

One of the amazing features of Social Studio includes the ability to recognize whether the shared opinion regarding your business is positive or negative and access the keywords used in posts concerning your brand. If negative customer opinions are going on in bulk,it can be instantly identified and can be further addressed at the moment.

If you want to tap into the power of social media in your customer service, Social Studio is your buddy!

9. Brand24

Brand24 is a tool that provides all your social insights. It helps you to know what people say about your brand online and what is going on with your competitors. It gives you real-time access to mentions about your brand online, from influential publishers to social networks.

Getting continual insight lets you effectively respond to positive as well as negative comments across your multiple social media platforms, which helps you stay engaged with your audience and harness any potential sales opportunities.

Today, social media monitoring cannot be missed at any cost if you want to make your brand stand out from the crowd. This is where Brand24 comes into light. It helps your brand to reach out to your customers before they even have to look at you show your dedication, drive, and humanize your business.

10. Tweetdeck

According to Twitter, in the last 2 years, customer service interactions over Twitter have increased 250%.

These statistics show how much people adore Twitter to reach out to brands. If you want to leverage the power of Twitter to improve your customer service, Tweetdeck is a Twitter-focused managing tool. It is a real-time tracking, organizing and engagement tool. Twitter is the best social platform to offer quality customer service.

Imagine a customer raised a complaint via Twitter. With Tweetdeck, you can then DM or email that tweet to your employees and/or team members and schedule a direct reply to that customer.

11. Sendible

Sendible is a complete social media management platform that helps you manage social networks, publish content, schedule messages, engage with your audience and measure ROI from a single dashboard. Be wise in identifying opportunities and trends in the industry.

With Sendible, you can easily monitor mentions of your brand and instantly react to your customers' positive or negative sentiments on the social web. It supports over 20 social platforms, thus making it handy to manage and respond using one easy-to-use dashboard. It prioritizes your replies for an immediate response by highlighting whether mentions and messages are positive, negative or neutral.

If you are looking for a single tool to succeed on social media, Sendible is.

12. Rebrandly

Branded short links in social media marketing are now a best practice, as they're known to increase trust between your brand and your customers. You can create branded short links using Rebrandly.

Rebrandly is the most advanced link shortener for creating branded and custom URLs. There's a link behind every piece of valuable information you share online. Every one of those links is an asset to your company. With Rebrandly, you can put your brand on your links. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using Rebrandly: 

• Branded links can drive a higher click-through rate.
• Enhanced brand awareness and visibility.
• Increased link trust.

Some of the more interesting features that Rebrandly offers marketers include:

• UTM builder
• Editable destination URL
• QR codes
• Traffic routing
• Link retargeting
• 50+ app integrations
• API

“Customers expect quick responses, and social media is the perfect delivery place. Platforms like Twitter and Instagram have become real-time help desks. A strong customer service team should focus on setting clear response time targets and being available during peak hours.

Social media offers a unique opportunity to build deeper relationships with customers. By using CRM tools designed for these platforms, brands can analyze customer behavior and tailor their responses.

Innovative tools like AI-driven chatbots and social listening platforms can make a huge difference. Chatbots handle simple queries instantly, while listening tools help brands identify trends, resolve potential issues early, and even join conversations proactively.

One of our clients repeatedly complained about delivery delays, which were voiced across multiple social platforms. By closely monitoring these mentions, we implemented a strategy to notify customers of potential delays ahead of time. This proactive communication reduced complaints and increased trust in the brand.

While technology is essential, the human touch remains irreplaceable in building trust. While automation can handle the volume, it should ensure that complex or sensitive issues are escalated to real people.

The future of social media customer service is all about integration and personalization. Omnichannel strategies—where social media seamlessly connects with email, live chat, and phone support—create a consistent experience across platforms.” - Mark Voronov, Co-founder & CEO of Socialplug.

Cost Considerations in Social Customer Service Software Implementation

Implementing social customer service software is a significant investment, and the associated costs can vary depending on several factors. Understanding the pricing structures and identifying potential hidden expenses will help businesses better budget and select the right solution. Here's a breakdown of cost considerations that will guide organizations in evaluating the financial implications of adopting such tools.

Cost Factors and Pricing Models for Social Customer Service Software

Understand the cost of choosing the right platform. Most have different pricing models, so select the one that best fits your business needs and budget.

Subscription and One-Time Payment: Most have subscription-based services, whereby you pay either monthly or yearly. Usually, this includes all the software upgrades, support, and cloud services. This is a very flexible approach, as you do not pay much upfront, but it can build up over time. Some might have a once-off payment. This seems great because you only pay once, and you're done. The initial costs will be higher, though, and extra charges may occur for support or updates.

Pricing and Licensing: Social customer service tools usually offer different pricing levels depending on your desired features and the number of users. Be sure to check what's included in each tier and if it fits the size of your team and needs. If you have a bigger team, you will be required to buy more licenses, so it's crucial to calculate how many people will be using the tool and then compare the different plans.

Additional Costs: Remember that integrating the new platform with your current systems could add up. For example, linking the social customer service tool to your CRM, analytics tools, or other customer service software might require extra work or resources. It is best to consider these potential integration costs upfront to avoid any surprises later on.

Evaluating Integration Costs

When implementing social customer service software, it's essential to consider how it will integrate with your existing systems. The integration process can affect your timeline and overall costs, so it’s worth evaluating this aspect carefully.

Tech Stack Compatibility: You may face additional costs if the software needs to work alongside other tools your business already uses—like a CRM system or helpdesk platform. Sometimes, integrating these systems isn’t as simple as it sounds. You may need custom solutions or third-party tools to make everything work smoothly, which can increase both time and expenses.

Hidden Expenses: Integration costs often aren’t apparent at the start. You might need to upgrade or adjust your existing systems to accommodate the new software, which could lead to unexpected expenses. It’s required to review your current workflows and thoroughly assess the potential adjustments needed. Taking this step allows you to avoid surprises later and ensure the project stays within budget.

Final thoughts

You need to know your brand's requirements before selecting the right social media tools. You need tools to help you with what you are already doing on social media. It will help you choose appropriate social media tools for your business.

To provide a pleasing social customer experience, speaking to users where they are and when they need you is crucial. Choose the one from the above that best serves your business’s needs and caters to social media. Regularly monitoring your brand’s social media accounts can take your customer service efforts from ‘acceptable’ to ‘outstanding.’ Remember, the better your social care, the more social traffic you will get!