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Social media can be a boon or bane for customer service complaints. Many people are demanding real-time responses from brands. However, many companies are failing to provide adequate experience. The State of Customer Service 2015 – whitepaper from The Northridge Group, examined customer’s attitudes toward online customer service from more than 1,000 respondents.
As per the whitepaper, 1 out of 3 respondents believe that social media customer service doesn’t meet their expectations. Strikingly, 26% believe online chat exceeds expectations; 15% believe it doesn’t.
Social media is utilized as a real-time and highly interactive platform to solve customer complaints. Yet, 63% of customers have to contact a brand at least 2 times before an inquiry is resolved. 1 out of 10 of respondents said they had to contact the brand four or more times before resolution.
To top it all, social media has an issue resolution rate of 13% — the lowest of any channel!
Therefore, which is the most effective channel for customer complaints? Any guesses? If you guessed the good ol’ POTS then you are correct. More than 3 out of 4 respondents place a call when the issue is urgent, likely because they report the same day resolution rate to be the highest of all the channels (82%).
Knowing the value of social media it’s here to stay and is only increasing, 17% of respondents expect a response within minutes, but 32% had to wait for 24 hours, while 30% had to wait a week or longer.
Resolution rates appear to be worse than response rates – which I agree brands should not try to resolve customer complaints on social media and make it an open battlefield for everyone to chime in. According to the report, 17% of customers expect a resolution within minutes, and 25% expect one within an hour. Unfortunately, 39% of customers failed to have their issue resolved for a week or more.
There was a mere 2% who chose social media first. In fact, social media is a last ditch choice when a customer service issue is urgent, but respondents don’t believe it’s a fast way to resolve an issue.
Do you want to find tips for improving the social media customer experience? Then please download the whitepaper.
