Social media has emerged as a strong pillar in businesses and positively impacting on all spheres of business. It has been increasingly used in the fields of marketing and customer care. This came as a result of high usage amongst all classes of the people in the world
According to websitebuilder.org.uk social media usage and adoption in the US has increased from 5% in 2005 to 69% in 2016. It is simple logic for businesses to move to where people or rather customers are. With a social strategy alone you can reach more than 69% of the population in the US. According to the same source out of every ten people, seven of them are active on social media while Facebook messenger alone has been downloaded more than 1.2 billion times.
Websitebuilder.org.uk indicates that 90% of social media users have used the medium to communicate with a brand while 63% of users expect a brand to offer customer service via social media and 1 in 4 people in the UK has used it to complain in 2015. This statistic alone means that customers have already gone social. They expect customer support to be active on social where they give their reviews on the same whether it is positive or negative feedback.
Customer’s preference for social media over other channels for customer support has been rising steadily overtaking all other channels of communications. For example, websitebuilder.org.uk gives stunning findings on customer preferences putting it as follows. 34.5% of customers prefer social media as a form of customer support with another 19.4% preferring Email support, website live chat at 24. 7% while only 16.1% preferred to receive customer support via toll-free phone numbers.
Customer’s feedback on advertising has also seen positive ratings over the years with website builder putting the figure as follows. 70% of users are more likely to use a brand when reached out to via social media. 31% of customers make presale inquiries and another 39% provide feedback to organizations online. Putting into consideration to the above findings there is a reason why any business should not be left behind in utilizing the full potential of social media integrations as part of their business processes.
Brand Awareness
The creation of a business brand on social media has to be taken seriously having understood the importance attached to it. Social media gives brand awareness to your business increasing your customers and retaining the existing customers by providing customer support. On branding benefits, websitebuilder.org.uk found out that answering a social media complaint increases customer advocacy by as much as 25%. With a stunning figure of 75% of them sharing good experiences with brands on social media and increasing brand loyalty to over 65%.
Social media has already overtaken the traditional forms of customer support and marketing if these findings are anything to go by. In fact, it reinforces other forms of marketing as put in the findings above. They also found out that 71% of consumers with positive social customer care experience are likely to recommend the same brand to others. One can comfortably say we are in the social media revolution age having affected business to unimaginable levels within a decade.
Customer Support
Following this trend, many businesses offer customer support on social media as expected by their customers and clients. <a href=”https://websitebuilder.org.uk/“>Website bulders</a> had this finding of the same. That 81% of business use social media within customer experience management, and 56% of global consumers have higher expectations for customer service now than they had in 2015. Consumer or customer complaints have also been increasing on social media with the finding putting it 8 times more complaints from 2014 to 2015.
While Facebook remains dominant, twitter interactions have risen by 250% from 2014 as explained by the same websitebuilder.org.uk. These findings though expected are already an eye opener to social media operations by businesses.
Companies and organization have taken this social age seriously with many of them offering promotions and offers over social media as demanded by customers. The traditional competition has since moved to social media with brands try to outdo each other. This has led to brands getting overwhelmed by customer feedback. What seems to be happening is brands are not enough to catch up with consumers if websitebuilder.org.uk finding is a reality.
They seem to have found that 95% of customer complaints on social media don’t reach the companies may be because lack of adequate staff trained to handle them or taking social media craze lightly. In the same report, 80% of companies state they do deliver exceptional social media experience with only 8% of customers agreeing to this statistic.
This seems a trend to worry about. While customers have taken social media seriously brands seem to be lagging behind as most complains go unattended to. In terms of complaint about demographics, they found out that 47% of customers between the ages of 18-34 have complained about brand customer support with the women two times more likely to take their bad customer service experience online.
The finding included that Facebook and Twitter are more accurate at delivering responses than email putting their accuracy at 48% while they are 44% faster at delivering the same responses in comparison to email. What this means is that customers care more about social media than what they find in their emails.
In terms of ranking, Facebook is more used and more interactive than other sites. Websitebuilder.org.uk put the percentage of adult internet users using Facebook at 79% while 83% of female internet users and 75% of male internet users are on Facebook, Facebook is followed by Twitter with 80% of social customer service requests come from Twitter. Instagram leads on engagements of brands putting it at 58 times more per follower than on Facebook.
Social media can improve customer satisfaction with the report putting it at 26.6% more. Instant feedback improves customer satisfaction while on the other hand, it can also kill your brand if you don’t give it the attention it deserves. If there happens to bad response time, then this would automatically impact negatively on your brand. Businesses have to be extra careful to ensure it brings more revenue and customers rather than impacting negatively on your business. Necessary precautions have to be in place to avoid such instances.
Bio:
Josh Wardini, Editorial Contributor and Community Manager at websitebuilder.org.uk. With the preliminary background in communication and expertise in community development, Josh works day-to-day to reshape the human resource management of digitally based companies. When his focus trails outside of community engagement, Josh enjoys the indulgences of writing amidst the nature conservations of Portland, Oregon.
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