How long does it take you or your social media manager to respond to tweets, direct messages, posts and other forms of communication on the various social media networks? Time after time, polls and research have been conducted and the answer is always the same – customers, prospects and fans expect to be responded to in a very timely fashion. In fact, they utilize social media for communication as the expectation is to receive even faster feedback than traditional customer service emails.
Best Practices for Communication on Social
As a general rule, it is recommended that you respond to social contact within a time frame of 24 hours. Your connections expect fast communication through these channels so if you’re using them you must keep up with the expectations of customers and prospects. Of course there are companies that post frequently and never respond to customers at all. This sort of aggressive tactic of consistently sending out information and expecting engagement in return while ignoring what connections have to say is a quick way to destroy your brand’s reputation. If a response time of 24 hours is not possible, do get back as soon as possible to give respect to the public and to show you’re concerned with their wants and needs.
Do feel free to reply to messages of the same nature with template responses in order to save time. Just be sure to personalize each response with the correspondent’s name (when there are sufficient characters available). Social media gives you the tools to make personal connections so take advantage of the possibility.
Take your social communication as seriously as you would customer service emails or face-to-face contact with customers. The impact on your brand is just as significant.
Facebook Is Serious about Customer Response Time
To emphasize the importance of communicating in a timely fashion, Facebook has recently updated Business Pages to reveal the percentage of messages you’ve responded to as well as your average response time. This quiet update speaks volumes to how much fans heavily rely on social channels for customer service and feedback. It’s a great tool to keep businesses on their toes to maintain healthy response times and feedback and it’s also a quick way for a social user to make a quick judgment about a brand. Don’t just do well on Facebook because the numbers show. What would your statistics look like if they appeared on your other networks?
