Customer Service and Social Media Moderation Best Practices

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Your agency is on social media. You’re posting content consistently and trying to engage with the community online. It’s all going well until someone complains or asks a difficult question. The longer you wait to respond, the more negative attention the post gets. What should you do? How should you handle this?

Never fear, this is where customer service comes into play! As we all know from our customer service experience, both from being the customer and from being the provider, the first step is communication, and the most important part of communication is active listening. While we may not be able to provide a satisfactory solution or response in 280 characters, we can start the conversation publicly and start working towards resolving the issue while educating other people who may have the similar questions or concerns. 

This session will discuss when and how we need to use our customer service skills as a first responder agency, including best practices for:

• Handling complaints or difficult questions in a professional and empathetic manner,
• Handling abusive or inappropriate posts directed at you or other commenters,
• Handling the never-ending complaint – when nothing you say or do seems to satisfy the person commenting,
• Handling trolls – when to reply and when to ignore.

Who this session is for: Anyone running the main social media accounts or section/specialty unit accounts for their agency or organization, and anyone who is representing their agency as an individual officer/employee on social media.