---
name: "social_customer_support"
description: "Handle public customer complaints, questions, and praise on social media: triage incoming mentions, hit response-time targets, de-escalate, move conversations to DM, and turn resolved complaints into testimonials. Use when a brand needs support replies on X, Instagram, Facebook, or reviews."
---

# Social Customer Support

## Purpose
Give public-facing, reputation-safe customer support on social channels: reply fast, triage correctly, calm people down, fix things, and leave the brand looking good to everyone watching.

## Workflow
1. **Set the SLA baseline.** Adopt first-response targets before anything arrives: under 1 hour on X and Instagram, under 4 hours on Facebook messages, faster for public complaints. Details in `references/response_time_targets.md`. If the team cannot staff that, publish support hours and use a holding reply instead of silence.
2. **Triage every mention.** Classify each incoming item as praise, question, complaint, troll/bad-faith, or crisis before drafting anything. Unsure between complaint and crisis? Treat it as crisis and escalate. Details in `references/triage_taxonomy.md`.
3. **Acknowledge in public, resolve in private.** For complaints: post a short empathetic public reply first, then move the specifics to DM or a support channel. Never vanish into DM without public acknowledgment. Move-to-DM triggers and the public-reply structure are in `references/public_to_private_protocol.md`.
4. **De-escalate with the five-step script.** For each complaint: acknowledge, own what is yours, fix it, make good, follow up. Use the channel-adapted scripts in `references/deescalation_scripts.md`. Never argue the facts of a complaint in public, even when the complainer is wrong. Never delete a legitimate complaint comment.
5. **Resolve, then convert.** Once the fix lands and the customer confirms they are satisfied, follow up and ask for a review or testimonial. The ask comes only after confirmed resolution, never before. Sequence in `references/recovery_to_testimonial.md`.
6. **Log and feed back.** Record every complaint with date, handle, category, commitment made, and outcome. Scan weekly for repeat themes and hand product or process issues to the responsible team. A complaint nobody tracks is a complaint that repeats.

## Output Contract
Each support interaction handled through this skill ends with:
- a triage classification (praise / question / complaint / troll / crisis);
- a public reply drafted per the relevant script, in brand voice;
- for complaints: a public acknowledgment plus a DM handoff message, or a clear reason the item stays public;
- a logged entry: date, handle, category, commitments, outcome, follow-up date;
- for resolved complaints: a follow-up confirming satisfaction, then a review/testimonial ask when appropriate.

## Operating Rules
1. Speed first, polish second. A fast, sincere acknowledgment beats a perfect reply that arrives late. If the full fix takes time, say when you will be back.
2. Never invent facts. Every number, date, policy claim, or product claim in a reply must be verified or cut.
3. An apology acknowledges feelings and experience, not legal fault. "Sorry this happened to you" is safe; "we were wrong" is a judgment call for management.
4. Never promise compensation, refunds, or exceptions beyond what the team has actually authorized you to offer.
5. Do not post customer account details, order numbers, or contact info publicly. Ask for them in DM only.
6. Never engage bad-faith actors at length. One calm factual correction if a false claim is spreading; otherwise disengage.
7. Crises (harm claims, press or influencer pickup, sudden complaint velocity) go up the chain before any public drafting. Do not improvise crisis responses.
8. Follow up on every commitment. A promised callback that never happens costs more than the original complaint.