Introducing the Brand New Social Inbox

More and more customers are embracing social media as their new support channel. That’s why we’re excited to introduce our brand new Social Inbox, which streamlines all inbound social conversations and allows global enterprise teams to manage and track responses at scale.

In addition to answering technical or sales-related questions, the Social Inbox makes it easier to route conversations to specific representatives, ensuring that every interaction comes from the right person at the right time.

Make your Customers Happy. In Real-time.

51% of customers expect to hear back from a company within an hour, yet organizations take an average of 4 hours to respond! Clearly, companies are falling behind when it comes to responsiveness and problem resolution. So, to help you connect with customers on social media and meet their expectations, our new Inbox will automatically aggregate the following interactions—from every network—into one place.

• Twitter: Mentions, Replies, and Direct Messages
• LinkedIn: Comments
• Facebook: Comments and Direct Messages
• Instagram: Comments

This new capability makes it much easier (and more realistic) for your team to deliver timely responses while enriching the customer experience through personal and immediate engagement.

Ensure a Transparent & Collaborative Workflow

Managing social conversations from one interface isn’t enough. For enterprise teams scattered across various locations, divisions, and time zones, it’s crucial to have a Social Inbox that supports two functionalities:

• Collaboration: Team members should be able to work together to provide immediate and personal responses for better customer relationships.
• Audibility: Team managers should be able to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and hold employees accountable by visualizing who handled a conversation and when. 

Thanks to Oktopost’s Social Inbox, you can tick both boxes using the following features:

Conversation Statuses

Once Oktopostidentifies a new conversation, it will appear at the top of your Social Inbox, similar to your email inbox. Any account user with access to the Inbox—whose profile is relevant—will be able to view the conversation.

Every conversation has two possible statuses: Pending and Archived. Once you Mark an Item as Done, it will be archived and removed from your Inbox feed. If Oktopost detects an update related to an archived conversation, such as another reply or a comment, it will automatically put the archived item back into your Inbox in Pending status. This behavior is essential when considering that your team can maintain a “Zero Inbox” without neglecting any message.

Conversation statuses are the same for all users, meaning that if you mark an Item as Done, it will also be archived for other users.

The Social Inbox also allows you to differentiate between seen and unseen conversations. Messages that have been clicked and read will be greyed out—a state that is only visible to you. Once a seen conversation is updated, it will pop back up to the top of your inbox, and the status will change to unseen.

Other Engagement Types

Besides the option to reply, the Inbox also allows you to like, share, or send a direct message to a user who initiated the conversation. These options are available depending on the network and whether or not the conversation is public.

If it’s possible to engage using other profiles, a selection will be available in the top right-hand corner of the Inbox. If you choose to directly message the initiator of the conversation, a new Inbox conversation thread will appear once the user replies to you.

Search Filters

To help find and organize conversations, the Social Inbox allows users to create their own feeds based on custom filters. By default, all users will have the following tabs:

• Inbox: A feed containing Unassigned conversations in Pending status
• Assigned to me: A feed containing conversations that have been assigned to me in Pending status
• Assigned to any: A feed containing all assigned conversations in Pending status

Tabs can be renamed or removed, and new tabs can easily be added. To customize the feed inside a tab, simply apply the desired search filters and Save the search. If you do not save your search, the filters will automatically reset for your next visit.

Assignments

The Social Inbox allows you to assign conversations to different team members. Simply select the user to whom you want to assign the conversation. This ensures a productive and focused environment where employees are accountable for specific conversations and can maintain ongoing customer relationships.

Assignments allow users to communicate and hand off interactions using several notification types:

• When a conversation is assigned or re-assigned
• When someone leaves a note in a conversation
• When a conversation status changes
• When someone mentions a user in a note

All of the above are available both via email and in-app notifications.

Integrate with 3rd Party Platforms

Conversations may start on social but can very quickly shift to other channels. You may wish to streamline the process by integrating your Social Inbox with other systems like CRM or support.

Oktopost offers various integration options, from our native Salesforce Cases integration to the Zapier and Webhooks integration. If you’re looking to connect the Social Inbox with any third-party system and want more information, feel free to contact support.

Get Started with the Social Inbox

The new Social Inbox was carefully designed to scale, track, and improve your social response management strategy. With a neat view of every social conversation—be it a mention, comment, or direct message—your global enterprise teams can work together to communicate with customers, solve their challenges, and provide personal support in real-time.