Having previously seen that Social Media is still very small and most people are not using much technology to support it. We wanted to run the survey again to see how social media is now used in the contact centre.
Who is Responsible for Dealing with Social Media in Your Company?
Social Media is Still in the Hands of the Marketing Department
While there has been a drop from 79% of those surveyed saying that the marketing departments had responsibility for social media, there is still a significant proportion of 66.7%.
Overwhelmingly, our respondents’ call centres still place social media in the hands of marketing professionals, rather than customer service agents.
This suggests that in many businesses the promotional benefits of social media are well recognised and exploited, whilst customer relationship management usage lags behind.
Which Social Media Channels Does Your Company Monitor?
Change in Channels Affects Which Ones are Monitored
As new social channels have been developed it does mean which ones being monitored has changed. Previously Twitter and Facebook were the most monitored social media platforms. 76% of respondents said that their company monitored Twitter, beaten only by Facebook, which is monitored by 85% of our respondents. Of the other networks, LinkedIn is monitored by 39% of respondents, while less high profile networks like TripAdvisor and Amazon gathered only 9% and 12%, respectively.
While the respondents did say they weren’t monitoring Instagram and TikTok etc. There will probably be a trend towards this as Gen Z use these additional channels more as a search tool than regular sites like Google, thus meaning that companies need to stay informed about what is being said about them on these channels.
Does Your Contact Centre Respond to Social Media Complaints?
Complaints Grab Attention
When we previously ran the survey only 19% of respondents said that their call centres didn’t respond to complaints via social media. Almost half (43%) always respond to complaints, while the rest usually or sometimes respond. This has changed to now 100% of people saying “Yes always”.
Much of the discussion around social media in the contact centre industry often focuses around empowering agents to take ownership of problems and this proves that we can no longer ignore what is being said about us.
How Many Social Media Contacts Do You Get Per Day?
Social Media Contacts are Rising
Surprisingly, our survey previously found that 65% of those surveyed receive fewer than five contacts via social media per day. 17% received 6-25 contacts per day, followed by 26-100 contacts (9%) 101-500 (4%) and more than 500 (4%).
Now 66.7% receive between 0-25 contacts per day and more surprising was 33.3% receive 26-100 contacts showing it really is a channel of choice for a lot of customers.
How Many Agents Do You Have Dealing with Social Media in Your Contact Centre?
Few Agents Still Deal with Social Media
Almost half (48%) of those surveyed previously said that 2-5 agents dealt with social media in their contact centre. This is not surprising in light of the fact that most contact centres receive fewer than five contacts per day via social media.
While now there is 100% of people saying they have between 1-5 people dealing with social media – there is a trend towards having dedicated people answering queries and training people specifically for this task.
How Do You Allocate Social Media Complaints to Agents?
New Technology Used for Allocating Complaints
While 33.3% of people surveyed said they still manually allocate complaints to an agent, it is interested to see that the overall majority (66.7%) say they use a queuing system.
For more great insights and advice from our panel of experts, read these articles next:
- Top Tips for Social Customer Service
- How to Provide Great Social Customer Service
- How to Handle Emojis in Customer Service
Author: Jo Robinson
Published On: 1st Feb 2012 - Last modified: 27th Apr 2023
Read more about - Technology, Back Office, Social Media
