Don't Ignore Online Customer Service

Don’t Ignore Online Customer Service

Your food truck’s social media pages are every bit as important as a face to face encounter with a customer. But some food truck owners fail to provide the same type of online customer service as they provide when on the road.

We went undercover and posted service related questions on 25 food truck social media pages. We will keep the names of these trucks to ourselves to protect the innocent. To our surprise, a few of the truck pages removed the question from their page without ever commenting, and another six questions remained unanswered for at least three days. Only nine food trucks took the time to answer questions posted within 48 hours.

Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Online Customer Service

Eliminating or ignoring online customer service related questions posted on your food truck business social media pages is unprofessional at best and significantly damaging to your food truck brand at worst. Such practices ensure only that the issue will remain unresolved and the customer will grow only angry. What food truck owner would allow an employee to walk or turn away from a customer who had just asked them a question? We hope none, but that’s exactly what some food trucks are doing online.

Food truck owners that choose to interact actively with their customers on Facebook will continually gain customer loyalty. Those who ignore service and support related issues posted on the world’s most popular social utility should seriously reevaluate their social media strategies.

4 tips on how to effectively manage online customer service:

Respond quickly. Reply to queries and complaints in a timely manner to make sure other customers don’t see you left someone hanging.
Be helpful. This tip might seem obvious, but can be easily forgotten in online customer service. It’s important to realize that being available does not equal being helpful. It’s not enough to simply provide a quick answer. The quality of each interaction counts.
Be proactive. On Facebook respond to customer questions as status updates. They are more visible than comments to wall posts. Doing so can potentially prevent even more questions or complaints over the same issue.
Share your wins. Customers post positive comments, not just negative ones. Share that information internally with your food truck team members. Everyone seems to love good news, especially if all they usually hear are complaints.

How do you make sure customer questions and complaints on social media are addressed adequately? Let us know in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter

By Richard Myrick|2017-12-09T09:06:23-05:00Dec 9, 2016|Social Media|

About the Author: Richard Myrick

Richard Myrick is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born. Richard also wrote the "Running a Food Truck for Dummies" available in bookstores everywhere and Amazon. You can reach out to Richard by email at: [email protected].