Traditional vs. Instagram customer support: Which is better?

Customer service on Instagram is characterized by sending dynamic and fun messages through various media. You can interact with people in different ways and provide interesting promotions and posts through images, videos, or stories. Let’s see the features and advantages of it:

Instagram has its own specific features for serving and interacting with customers. The best part is that you can use several strategies to capture your customers’ attention with every contact. Therefore, you can choose to work with any or all of these to create exceptional service.

The reality is that working through automated support available in a recognized application becomes an excellent advantage in terms of efficiency and speed. Your customers won’t need to wait for a response or delay in managing their sales or requesting services.

Managing through Instagram makes brands and customers feel great satisfaction. We’re talking about a dynamic and entertaining platform that allows you to get to know your brand visually and textually. Additionally, you can carry out all procedures and registrations through a single platform.

We know that Instagram is an app dedicated to engaging with people through various multimedia approaches (photos, videos, comments, etc.). Beyond knowing what it’s about, it’s also important to understand how Instagram customer support works for businesses:

Instagram has an excellent way to engage reliably with its customers: automated interactions through Instagram DM and comments. With this, you can:

• Provide personalized and reliable support.
• Interact immediately and personally when they respond to a story.
• Verify preferences and suggestions through comments.
• Quickly and directly identify who is interested in your company.

Currently, there are popular brands that choose Instagram to carry out their campaigns. Among these are Airbnb, which, thanks to this platform, sells exceptional travel experiences instead of rooms, and Nike, which uses Instagram to motivate and inspire its consumers, encouraging them to use its products for a more active life.

Thus, Instagram customer support, more than just a messaging channel, is a channel where you can share experiences and drive business growth through valuable posts.

Let's now talk about and explain the channels that have always been our go-to for customer service—traditional support channels:

Call centers have been used for years (and are still in use) to capture user interest and thus drive sales. They even provide immediate customer service to address various situations such as complaints, guides, or even emergencies. This is a service that is unlikely to go out of style, as it offers enormous benefits to the various industries that require it.

Email is a classic means of customer service for businesses. They can send publications, news, or formal promotions with a higher level of development and professionalism. Among many others, it is the preferred medium for increasing customer production and interest.

Although artificial intelligence is gaining ground, it’s true that many customers require immediate assistance via live chat, which constantly increases their interest and attention towards the company.

On the other hand, another classic channel that remains important is help desk ticket management, which processes customer requests to organize, track, and resolve complex issues that require collaboration between multiple teams.

Now that we’ve learned about each method separately, let’s do a direct comparison between Instagram customer support and traditional support for your business assistance:

When it comes to speed of results, Instagram customer support automation takes the lead. While traditional support provides empathetic and personalized responses, the difference in response time is considerable compared to an intelligent tool.

When it comes to personalization and customer experience, both can deliver great results. The difference will depend on the number of customers you are willing to serve. Traditional support is responsible for providing completely personalized service to a specific number of customers, while Instagram customer support has the capacity to provide massive service.

In terms of scalability and automation, Instagram will provide better results. This doesn’t mean that traditional support offers poor results; on the contrary, it just means that its capabilities are limited in these areas. It’s important to keep in mind that Instagram can integrate with other tools (such as chatbots or artificial intelligence), thereby providing more growth opportunities.

The issue of profitability will depend on your capabilities. That is, if you’re a large company that’s not concerned about the financial aspect, choosing traditional support with human agents won’t be detrimental. However, if you’re a small business and need excellent results without investing too much, Instagram customer support is the best option.

Although we’ve stated that Instagram customer support is the best thing your customer service can do, it certainly presents certain challenges that must be overcome to create the ideal service:

Managing a high volume of customers is a success; however, it also brings certain challenges, especially when it comes to maintaining the quality of the response and the agility of sending interactions. Therefore, it’s important to pay attention to these elements to create a great Instagram customer support contact.

To create exceptional service, we must ask ourselves how to contact Instagram customer support. The best way is to manage team training to create social media-centric communication. The challenge that may be embedded in this case is not maintaining a clear structure for managing authentic communication, so you must provide them with the necessary help and support at all times.

Instagram has its own privacy policy and rules that must be followed. If, for any reason, these are ignored or if any clause (even a minor one) is ignored, there is a risk of your account being blocked or terminated. These types of platforms are excellent, but they must be handled with caution to provide reliable service.

Asking you to choose just one tool seems inhumane. Ideally, you should be able to take advantage of what both offer and thus create successful customer service. That said, here’s how to use traditional customer service and customer support on Instagram:

In many cases, you’ll need agile responses, especially for impatient customers eager to request your products and services; in this case, Instagram is an excellent option. Additionally, you can create a sales funnel that encourages consumption through interactive stories or sweepstakes.

When delicate situations arise, digital support isn’t always convenient (it can generate mistrust and frustration). This is where traditional channels, such as phone calls or traditional support like emails, take center stage. Customers will quickly find a live agent who can provide greater empathy and secure solutions.

Omnichannel support is also a possibility. You can combine both forms of support, with Instagram focusing on increasing your production and sales levels, while traditional support handles complex situations that require human agents.

While we can conclude that Instagram customer support is the most efficient and dynamic tool for engaging in conversations, the reality is that the best strategy would be to find a balance between it and traditional support. One way to do this is by evaluating our own business and determining the service we want to provide. After that, we should address all the characteristics, challenges, and strategies we discussed, and then steer the service in the direction we want.

The assistance of human agents will always be necessary; we cannot deny this. Therefore, it’s best to let automation handle repetitive tasks and frequent messages, while representatives are responsible for providing personalized support through traditional channels. Now, to build this ideal balance, it’s best to work your Instagram customer support with efficient software like Kommo, an excellent conversational CRM that will deliver the right kind of success for your business.

Contact us for a chat or a free demo session.

💬 Chat with us here on the website or within your account

🤓 Book a free demo session with the team

🤝 Find a partner to do it for you so that you can relax

🎥 Visit our YouTube Channel