November is a month for digging deeper and finding meaning, looking inward to focus on what you have to be thankful for and connecting with your loved ones. This month we can reflect upon the ways in which social media can impact the quality of our company’s customer service by reviewing the top social media related customer service articles of November.

1. Using Social Media to Bring Your Customer Service and Marketing Teams Together

“Studies have shown that 42% of the consumer’s social media to express their issues expecting a resolution within 60 minutes maximum, followed by 32% not waiting longer than 30 minutes for an immediate response.”

With statistics such as these, social media is a customer service platform that simply cannot be ignored. Instead, businesses can use these channels as a means of obtaining new brand ambassadors and ensuring customer loyalty by utilizing the tips found in this article by Multichannel Merchant.

2. More Than One-Half of Consumers Prefer Social Customer Service

One of the greatest benefits to interacting via social media is the humanity aspect. When representatives speak to customers more frequently, responding immediately and going off-script, it creates a trusting relationship between the customers and the brand. They also prefer this as it is more casual and easy to use.

For a full report on the subject, be sure to check out the article and their in-depth PDF.

3. Seven Guiding Principles for Implementing Social Customer Service

It seems that some companies still do not take social media seriously enough as a platform for customer service, which is a shame as it is being used as one anyway. This article addresses the benefits of early adoption in depth, as well as the dangers of underestimating the new channels.

4. The DOs and Don’ts of Delivering a Good Social Customer Service Experience

Instead of being fearful that customers are now capable of openly discussing your brand worldwide for all to see, this article stresses the importance of making the most of customer feedback.

Not only should you respond and use the opportunity to demonstrate to other customers that you care, you should view the feedback as precious insight to help improve your product. This can be done by creating content and providing solutions to any obstacles that may arise.

5. Three Ways to Use Social Media Other Than As a Megaphone

“89% of social messages to brands go ignored and the average brand response time on social is ten hours. Now consider this: the same survey found that most people will wait a maximum of four hours and one in three will go to a competitor if they are ignored.”

This article focuses on different methods of avoiding negative feedback by adopting a proactive strategy. One example is making sure to respond promptly by integrating social channels into the company’s primary support system or CRM.

6. It’s Time To Get Serious About Social Customer Care

Great Australian opinion piece on why it is crucial to have a social media strategy in today’s marketplace. It also touches on the fact that providing support through social media is cheaper than the alternatives, and so companies will only benefit from coming up with a plan.

Do you really take your customer care seriously enough?

7. Twitter Debuts Tools To Help Brands Speed Customer Service

Even though great customer service requires a personal touch, there are certain benefits to automating services such as live chats. This article outlines the benefits and introduces a new Twitter tool which came out this month to help implement the automation.

8. Should You Hop on the Live Chat Train?

While this article is not specifically about social media, it is directly related to online engagement, which is a tremendous part of the social media culture. See the infographic for precise statistics and more information.