Social media is transitioning to in-app customer service

A direct line

Three – two – one: contact. Instagram has long been one of the industry leaders for social media and marketing. Now Instagram is taking the “social” part of social media one step further by initiating a “contact” button for businesses, allowing customers a chance to directly connect with their queries directly on a company’s respective platform.

Big name brands

According to a recent article on Digiday, “>several brands, including Nordstrom, Benefit, Delta and Denny’s to name just a few, have already jumped on board. Customers with a question can tap the “contact” button, after which they are prompted to call, text or email the brand.”

Touch of a button

Instagram points out that “the button makes it a smoother process for customers to get in touch by making sure everything is in one place and they don’t have to venture out of Instagram.”

Industry analysts applaud this latest evolution in the customer service chain but are quick to underscore importance of having a live person responding to one’s email on the other end instead of an auto-bot and an automated response.

Following in Twitter’s footsteps

Better yet, iCrossing says Instagram may want to take a page out of Twitter’s playbook.

“Twitter has been able to successfully promote its platform as a customer service channel for major brands, making it easy for them to extract value from every interaction. It allows customers to not only tweet at the brand directly but also for brands to initiate a direct message when needed.”

And speaking of Twitter, the social giant isn’t one to just sit on its laurels. Comments Conversocial, “Twitter is now a larger service channel than email for many leading companies, and they’ve responded by building major social care operations to handle the volume.”

Being able to measure the success of these operations through its [customer service] measures is a hugely important step, both to measure the quality of care and to compare with other channels.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Instagram introducing the “contact” button underscores the importance of social media as a customer service channel. This may well be the future of social media. Not that it will be the “driver” so-to-speak, but the formalization of service options through social network apps bodes well for customer-interaction in the future.

#SMCustomerService