With the popularity of visual content, Instagram has quickly become one of the best marketing channels for businesses of all sizes and niches, highlighting the importance of Instagram customer care.
As found by Meta’s own data, the majority of surveyed people say that Instagram is the number one social media platform for building relationships with brands and 90% of users follow at least one business in-app.
Today, around 25 million businesses are active on the platform. Not only big brands but also small businesses use Instagram for marketing products and services. When you start using Instagram for marketing, you should be also ready for providing customer care as the majority of people want to get customer support on the channel they use for communication and discovery.
Obviously, it’s nearly impossible for small businesses to provide omnichannel customer support. But if you have an Instagram presence and you’re looking for one channel to get started with customer care for your clients, make it Instagram.
Why Should Small Businesses Provide Instagram Customer Care?
Do you believe that Instagram customer care isn’t the right choice for your small business?
There are three proven reasons why small businesses should invest in excellent customer service.
- Satisfy clients’ customer service demands: Instagram’s community hit 2B monthly active users in 2021. With the growing number of users, it’s no wonder that they use this channel for communication with brands. This means your followers expect to communicate with your company and ask their questions on Instagram.
- Beat your competitors: For the majority of small businesses, Instagram isn’t the most obvious customer service channel to focus on. However, when you listen to your followers on the platform they choose, you stay ahead of your competitors who hope for the attention of the same audience.
- Use in-built business-specific features: From clickable links to quick replies via direct messages, Instagram has various in-built business-specific features for customer care that make the process of communication with customers easier and faster. It helps small businesses provide Instagram customer care with the least effort.
When done right, Instagram can become one of the most popular and effective channels for customer support. In this post, you can find five amazing Instagram customer care tips for small businesses.
1. Tell Followers About Contact Options
Thinking about Instagram customer care, most small businesses believe that they should have a solid team of customer service representatives who constantly monitor and solve requests on Instagram.
The more customer support channels you have, the harder for your customer support team. To make sure that your followers can get in touch with your business quickly, it’s a good idea to tell them about the contact options they have.
First, you can switch to a business Instagram profile and optimize your Instagram bio for customer support. Not only can you tell about contact options in the bio, but you can also add contact buttons like “Email” or “Call” to help visitors contact you with ease.
Second, you can dedicate an Instagram post to contact details and pin it to the top of your profile so that your followers never miss it. Here’s an example of a contact info post from one small business:
But if you want to wow your followers and encourage them to ask their questions on Instagram, you can make an eye-catching and unique Instagram post design.
For example, you can take a picture of your customer service representative, remove the background image with the help of tools like Depositphotos, and mix photos of your team with bright elements and contact information details. This approach grabs the attention of your followers and increases brand loyalty and trust.
2. Use Instagram Bio Link for Customer Support
With 2B users, 90% of whom follow at least one business profile in-app, Instagram has great traffic potential. Since users show interest in brand communication with your business, you can redirect your hooked visitors or followers to the dedicated customer support channel with the help of your bio link.
Look:
Every Instagram profile has an opportunity to include ONE clickable link in the bio. It appears at the top of your profile, so your followers are more likely to tap on it, especially if you include a strong call to action that informs that about customer support.
The solution for small businesses is simple. You can implement a chatbot on your website and share your website link to get more visitors, increase the page session, and solve customer service requests without having a dedicated customer service rep who monitors your Instagram profile. Win-win.
3. Implement Customer Self-Service
One of the best Instagram customer care tips that works well for small businesses is an opportunity to implement customer self-service (CSS) on your business profile.
This strategy includes proactive options for customers who want to find their solutions at their own pace. Simply put, CSS is a set of pre-recorded answers to questions your customers may have.
If you want to optimize your profile for customer self-service, you can do the following:
- Use question stickers to organize an Instagram Story Highlight album dedicated to FAQs
- Add a link to your knowledge base in your bio section
- Create explainer videos that tell viewers about your business, its products, etc.
- Include a phone number that has an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system
Want to take the next step? Check out how one small business made a separate Instagram profile, dedicated to frequently asked questions.
4. Make the Most Out of Quick Replies
With the growing popularity of Instagram as a customer service channel, the platform has its direct message (DM) feature that lets users send private messages to other users. What is more, there are effective ways to organize and manage conversations you have via DM.
But if you want to increase response time and help your customer service reps solve inquiries faster, you can make the most out of quick replies. If your customers ask the same questions over and over again, you can use this feature to set up pre-formatted responses, save them as replies and send them to avoid typing the same replies time to different users.
Want to create a solid list of quick replies? Listen to your followers. The most effective way is to monitor the comment section, pay attention to comments that get more Instagram likes, analyze these questions, and create canned responses.
After all, if one comment gets likes from other customers, this means people share or support this idea. As a result, this comment can hint at what questions your audience may have about your business, its values, or its products.
5. Provide Followers with Proactive Customer Support
Proactive customer support is a key to success. When you help customers solve their questions before they have problems or concerns, not only do you increase brand trust, but you can also boost customer satisfaction. What is more, proactive customer support allows customer service reps to focus on critical conversations instead of communicating with all clients who have questions.
Thus, it’s important to provide Instagram followers with proactive customer support. From a variety of options, you can focus on collecting and repurposing online reviews for your profile or sharing a customer satisfaction survey among your followers.
Otherwise, you can get negative comments from your customers whose experiences can turn your potential customers off. For instance, Made.com gets comments from people who find its customer service inappropriate.
If your dissatisfied customers leave negative complaints on your profile, you may use an email finder to get in touch with worried customers directly, solve their questions, and increase their trust. Not only can you increase customer satisfaction, but you can also save your brand’s reputation.
In a Word
It’s no wonder that small businesses establish and maintain a presence on Instagram to market their products or services, interact with potential customers, and convert leads into paying customers.
However, the demand for Instagram customer care has grown, too. Since people use the same communication channels for customer support, small businesses should expect a growing number of customer requests on Instagram.
If you want to bring your small business to the next level and wow your customers (both existing and potential ones), you should know and implement the above-mentioned handy tips on using Instagram customer care.