How to Handle Social Media Customer Support in a Natural Disaster

In today’s highly connected world, businesses everywhere are facing the reality that more and more consumers are turning to social media to voice their questions and concerns regarding a company’s services and products.

So this raises the obvious questions: What exactly is the current state of social media customer support? Who should be responsible for managing and responding to social media complaints? Is “first tweet resolution” even a reasonable goal?

And, as we experienced, it also raises some not-so-obvious questions, such as how to manage social media support during a natural disaster?

Our new social media support initiative was just six days in when Hurricane Sandy hit the Atlantic coast. Our clients’ in-house contact center was underwater, leaving their server out of commission. In the midst of this chaos, outsourced social media support became a critical connection to their customers.

It quickly became clear that social media is fundamentally about community. Supporting that community – whether in a disaster or daily life – became our priority.

Read more to find out how we leveraged the social media channel in the face of an epic natural disaster.