Managing social media comments and messages: a daily routine

Pick two or three fixed times in the day, for example when you start work, in the afternoon and before the day ends. At those times, go through the comments and messages from every channel in one go. Letting notifications wait in between is more efficient than jumping on each one; anything urgent stands out in the first pass anyway.

Incoming

Is this product in stock?

My order arrived damaged.

Love it, thank you!

Want more followers? 🔗

Reply nowQuestions and complaints

Pass to the teamReturns, tech, invoices

Say thanksPraise and kind words

No reply neededSpam and provocation

• Reply now: questions about products, prices, shipping or bookings, and complaints. These mean sales and reputation.
• Pass to the team: returns, technical issues, invoices and anything someone else has to solve. Let that person know and tell the customer when they'll hear back.
• Say thanks: praise and positive comments. A short, genuine reply encourages that person to come back.
• No reply needed: spam, unrelated links and messages meant to provoke. Replying only makes them bigger.

A response-time goal tells the team what can wait and for how long. There's no number that suits everyone; what matters is choosing a goal that fits your capacity and that you can tell customers about. A simple rule like "messages that arrive on working days get a reply the same day" is both doable and easy to understand for most small businesses.

Collect your answers to the five or ten most common questions in one document. It saves time and stops different teammates from giving different answers to the same question.

Before you paste a saved reply, use the person's name and add a detail specific to their question. The same sentence appearing again and again under comments gives the impression that nobody is really reading.

1. Acknowledge: write without brushing aside the problem and how the person feels about it.
2. Move the conversation to a private message: don't ask for an order number or address in public.
3. Solve it, or get it to the person who can: say clearly what will happen and when.
4. Follow up: once it's solved, let them know with a short message. Often the commenter updates their comment themselves.

Deleting criticism usually leads to a bigger backlash. Keep deletion for content that breaks platform rules, such as insults, personal data and spam.

When more than one person looks after the inbox, it's easy for two people to answer the same message, or for everyone to assume someone else will. Write down who owns the inbox and who covers when they're away.

In Fourdeck, the inbox is a permission. By default it's on for the owner, admin and publisher roles, and you can give it to another teammate on its own without changing their role.

Opening each platform's app one by one is where most of the time goes. In Fourdeck's shared inbox you see the comments and messages from your connected channels on one screen, reply to them and mark the ones you've finished. Which channels support comment and message management depends on the platform.