Social the fastest and most reliable service channel, study claims

Consumers now regard social media as the fastest and most reliable channel for customer service, new research has claimed.

eDigitalResearch surveyed 2,000 consumers and found that 80% consumers that contacted brands via social channels to resolve a service issue received a reply within 12 hours. This is compared to just 37% of consumers who received a reply to their emailed service query during the same time period.

Additionally, the findings showed that social is the only channel that guarantees a response from brands. Every respondent that has used social media to get in touch with a company said they received a response to their post, comment or tweet.

In terms of other channels, those who contact brands by letter, unsurprisingly, waited the longest for a reply with 62% waiting over 48 hours. Of those that used online chat to resolve their issue, 7% said that they never heard anything back from the company, the figures showed.

Overall, one in every 10 customers is left in the lurch and never receives feedback from a brand after they get in touch.

Derek Eccleston, commercial director at eDigitalResearch, said: “If a customer decides that they need to contact a company, their experiences should be the same no matter what channel they use. Obviously there are obstacles (such as the time delay with post) that some channels need to overcome or find a work around for.

“These results show that there are currently major disparities across customer touch points - measures should be taken to ensure that departments and teams work together to provide the best contact experience possible. Improving the customer experience should be a business wide operation.”

In contrast to the findings from eDigitalResearch, Conversocial’s Social Customer Service Benchmark report, which analysed over 140,000 social conversations over a three month period across Facebook and Twitter, found that only a minority of businesses are providing fast and satisfactory responses. 

According to the figures, just 3% of conversations regarding urgent and immediate issues were positive whilst 12% were negative whist communication regarding customers’ experience with a product or service were more negative (27%) than positive (23%).

MyCustomer.com recently provided a series of articles on social media customer service, looking at the strategy, tools, metrics and structure organisations need to effectively provide customer service via social channels.