First off, influence isn’t nearly as important when it comes to support.  Your social influence may get people through the door initially, but it will not keep them coming back.  For that you are going to have to develop relationships that have nothing to do with brand power, and everything to do with what is appropriate so far as the customer is concerned, and keeping your people on the same page.

As a company, you are going to want to be working with the same client information within your corporation.  Working from different information is a set up for disaster.  You can allow this database to be updated regularly so that everyone is on the same page.

Understand that answers can come from unexpected places.  Just because a certain question is fielded by a certain department doesn’t mean that department will be able to field the answer as well.  Allowing a corporation-wide customer data base is a step in the direction of allowing a corporation-wide answer pool to problems that your clients will bring you.  Use those social networking tools to unify your work group.

An awareness of what is ok to do or communicate online is going to be necessary to use online social media effectively.  For instance, if you have to get a client’s personal information, it would be ok to start that transaction on a public forum, but the information is not public so you would want to get the conversation to a more private mode.  While it may be important for those conversations to start out in public so that more people may be able to provide an answer, once it gets personal, the conversation needs to be moved away from the public forum to a private message or email type situation.

Be sure to be receptive to your existing and prospective clients.  Provide up to date answers to their current problem as they ask it.  Keep things tight within your company and respect your client’s privacy.  Use phone, email, real time conversation software and other tools as you need them, but keep things discreet when it comes to your client’s personal information.  Be aware that regardless of your companies social influence, taking these points into consideration may be the difference between losing customers to bigger companies, or stealing them because you are professional, and are able to use social media to resolve your customers’ issues as they come up in a respectful and courteous manner.