Smarty Social Media (SSM) includes a department of seven Customer Experience (CX) specialists that serve as the first point of contact across client-owned social media channels for consumer and provider audiences.
SSM built its Social CX function from the ground up with the specific objecitve of providing timely montioring and response that allows healthcare clients operating in highly regulated spaces to safely participate and engage via social media channels. The SSM CX team’s work has grown to support social influencer programs, giveaways and promotions, and expanded monitoring to international channels in multiple languages in alignment with FTC, FDA and other regulatory guidelines.
SSM is responsible for over 41 social handles across 6 social platforms. The SSM CX team supports all stages of the consumer/professional journey for its clients, with responsibility for educating patient prospects and doctor providers, supporting patient and provider questions/concerns, and engaging the social community.
As a social-first agency specializing in the healthcare space, the role of the SSM CX team is not only critical to supporting consumer and doctor engagement, but is a required function for regulated companies to maintain compliance. The SSM CX team is specially trained in regulatory compliance processes and monitors channels for any mention of adverse reactions. Strict escalation protocol for each client ensures FDA and other regulatory compliance to protect patients, providers and the brand.
SSM has built specific processes that address the needs of our unique clients in order to keep them compliant within highly regulated spaces. We work closely with client regulatory and legal counsel to develop custom workflows. For example, we created a three-touch process that proactively tries to help anyone with an issue or a complaint multiple times before “closing” their comment out. Highly structured process like this are specific to the social environment, requiring enormous attention to detail and thoughtful and thorough follow-up. The SSM CX team creates solutions that allows marketing teams to leverage social media despite regulatory and legal barriers.
SSM CX Team works as a seamless social extension to our clients Consumer Care teams. In 2022 alone, the team has reviewed, tagged and responded to over 1.2 million mentions, most of which were replied to within the first 4 hours of being received.
The achievement is not in managing heavy volume alone, but also in navigating new processes required by the source of the volume which is constantly changing and creating new territory for our clients and the industry. Specifically the impact of influencer programs, use of mega influencers by our clients, and new platforms like TikTok, put a spotlight on the SSM CX team to quickly develop new processes to manage and maintain regulatory compliance. Our team monitored over 320 individual influencers and their thousands of posts in 2022.
While the primary goals of the SSM CX team is to protect clients on social, the team also plays a vital role in driving consumers to action through meaningful engagements. The team has developed turn-key processes for collecting User Generated Content (UGC) that consistently ranks among the high-performing brand content. They also drove roughly 150,000 prime actions for clients through the careful use of links in comments.
There are two key areas that make these achievements particularly noteworthy: the complexity of the growth and FDA regulatory requirements.
The complexity: The SSM CX team met these challenges by innovating at a rapid pace and going outside its normal monitoring tools and processes in order to meet monitoring and compliance requirements. This included marrying manual processes with automated ones, finding innovative ways to use new and old tools, and constantly improving and streamlining as volume continued to increase at a rapid pace.
The regulation: Due to FDA regulatory requirements, it’s necessary to monitor all owned channels as well as mentions of adverse keywords on the web. Adverse mentions have a strict escalation and response protocol required to ensure the brand is operating within FDA guidelines. If not handled correctly, it can be detrimental to the brand. Because of this, entering a new platform or having influencer partnerships presents a new set of challenges that require new processes with extensive legal and regulatory alignment.
