Social Customer Care
Social customer care refers to handling customer matters through social networks and their direct messages, meaning enquiries, complaints and service requests that do not arrive by phone or email. It is characterised by short expected response times and partly public communication.
In practice
Decide deliberately whether to offer direct messages as a service channel and state that in your profile, including the hours you are reachable; an inbox left quietly open creates expectations you cannot meet. Move matters involving personal data such as order or health information out of public comments into a protected channel, and bear in mind that direct messages also sit with the platform operator and fall under the General Data Protection Regulation. For company pages on Facebook, page operator and platform may well be joint controllers for the visitor data. Article 26 GDPR then requires an agreement on the allocation of roles. Whether your business needs one, and in what form, is best clarified with your solicitor. Answer complaints publicly at least with a brief acknowledgement so onlookers see the response. Pushing every case to the phone loses that external effect.