“Too long, uncaring, and off-brand.” Three criticisms you never want to hear about your social media responses to customers! But it can be difficult to write posts that are short enough, empathetic enough, and on-brand when you have hundreds of cranky customers blowing up your feed. If it feels like you could use a writing assistant, you’re right! You could.

Generative AI tools like Chat GPT might be just the thing you need.
You may not be ready to let a bot fully write your responses to customers, but here are three ways Chat GPT can serve as a competent editor that fixes your draft responses quickly.

1. Chat GPT is great at making long responses shorter.

Let’s say you work in social media customer care for TSA.

To prepare to answer Ashley’s question, you’ll refer to TSA’s baby formula policy, which is a whopping 394 words long!

Let Chat GPT help. Use a prompt that includes:

• Ashley’s Facebook post
• Instructions on what type of social post you want the gen AI to write and how long it should be
• The link to the policy at the TSA website for Chat GPT to use and to share with the customer

Chat GPT didn’t write a perfect response, but it’s pretty good! For accuracy, we should change “Pack them separately in a clear, quart-sized bag…” to “Pack them separately from your other carry-on items…” But in seconds, the gen AI helped boil down a long policy. If you’re new to social media or new to a company, this is a big help!

2. Chat GPT can help you express empathy.

Sometimes, we’re just not feeling it with these customers! We understand that we should show empathy to customers who are genuinely struggling as well as to those who are overreacting, entitled, or just plain wrong. But it’s hard to show empathy when our very job drains our empathy away each day.

Gen AI can help. I know! It seems kind of twisted that an unfeeling non-human bot can help us humans find the words to express empathy, but it can.

That’s not a good reply. Jane has been waiting a month for an order. Lysa’s response is uncaring.

Chat GPT can do better. It can express more empathy than Lysa did.

I agree. It’s a little cheesy. The folded hands emoji may go a bit too far, and seeking Jane’s satisfaction while asking for her understanding is a lot. But this gen AI draft could be a big help to customer service agent Lysa whose empathy muscle seemed to be sprained.

Maybe Lysa recognized that his original post wasn’t empathetic enough. In that case, he could simply prompt Chat GPT to fix his coldhearted writing, like this:

Better, right? Now, you could argue that Lysa should be able to write a response that shows as much empathy as the gen AI did, and I would agree. But she didn’t do it, and Chat GPT did. Gen AI is just a tool and using it on Lysa’s response to Jane made the response better.

3. Chat GPT can help you write responses in your company’s brand voice.

Because social channels often include both marketing and customer service posts, your customer care posts should use the brand’s voice and tone. We don’t want social customer service responses to sound like they were written by some stodgy Complaints Management Team in the east wing of the ninth floor of the headquarters building!

Also, you may be writing responses on behalf of more than one brand. Your workday could include writing social posts for a hiking boots company with a brand voice that’s “brave, rugged, and brutally honest,” as well as a children’s shoe company that uses a “trustworthy, nurturing, and affordable” brand voice.

Let’s run an experiment to see how Chat GPT adjusts the writing style when it responds to the same customer query for each brand.

And here are prompts for Chat GPT that specify what brand voice to use. Notice how I included the customer’s original post, and then added in the appropriate brand description for each company, as well as the answer I want to give the customer.

And here’s what gen AI came up with. Is each response perfect? No. But they are distinct. The two brands don’t sound just like each other. On a busy day, when you’re writing responses for more than one brand, Chat GPT might be just the extra support you need.

Gen AI is not a better writer than you are. Chat GPT cannot do your job. You know customers better; you know your company’s products and processes better. You are more valuable than Chat GPT. But even professional bakers use a cake mix now and then. Gen AI is a useful tool. Use it well!