Undoubtedly, Social media is opening a new way of communication between companies and customers. Due to that, every customer has started to anticipate a quick response time from all brands and businesses. 

Whether a customer wants to appreciate the product or raise their issue or problems, social media is offering a new way for users to connect with brand and business in real-time. Using social media you can keep a watch on your customer thinking, feeling, and different activities performed by them.  

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Since social media is allowing you to go through your user’s issues and problems, users also expect a quick reply in real-time. According to the research conducted by eptica,  among 1000 American consumers 85% of them expect replay within six-hour on Facebook. 

(Note: If you want to earn a very responsive badge for your Facebook page then you have to very responsive on your Facebook page. That means you have to reply to 90% of the message within 15 minutes. Once facebook analyzes you are fulfilling its requirement then your page will be credited as a very responsive page.)   

Coming back on point, twitter user expectations are much higher than Facebook. That means 64% of the twitter user anticipant a quick response from page author within 60 minutes. If you are failing to respond to your customer post then you are not only losing them but you are increasing the chances of getting a bad online reputation among another user  

In this article, we help you to determine why social media response time matters adn how you can speed up your social media response time to offer better customer service. 

What is social media average response time? 

Before identifying different ways to speed up your social media response time lets determine different statistics that will you a better understanding of average social media response time. 

According to Social Sprout’s stats, 40% of the customers expect a reply from brands and businesses within an hour after putting their queries on social media platforms. And 79% of the customers expect the reply form business and brands within 24 hours. 

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From the above stats, you can easily determine that most of the social media users expect the response time on the same day. To be very specific let’s check customer’s expected social media response time on different platforms. 

Facebook 

Facebook is one of the popular platforms where customer posts are not less frequent but each post contains great intent. That means Business and brand gets a longer time frame within which they have to reply to their customer’s post and solve their query. Yet businesses have to reply to customer queries. 

More than 71% of the complaints are posted on Facebook which indicates you have to be very cautious while operating your Facebook page. The average response time on Facebook platforms is expected to be with 47 minutes, 180 minus, or one day.  Still, 85% of the customer expects a reply from your business and brand within six-hour.

Facebook also offers a unique feature that tells us how responsive your business and brand are on Facebook. For that, you have to earn the badge of very responsive as mention earlier. 

Twitter

Twitter users expect the response time to be very quick compared to Facebook. The average response time on twitter is expected to be with 12 minutes, seven hours, and one day. 64% of the twitter user expect the response time form the brand and companies within one hour.

Live Chat 

Compared to other channels like email and social media, live chat attracts more customer’s attention because of its quick response. 79% of the customer prefer to live chat to interact with brands and businesses. Brands and businesses can communicate with up to 6 customers at a time and it takes less than 48 seconds to respond to customer queries.

Live chat is the best way to communicate with customers and solve their queries with few minutes. If you are using live chat then make sure you are responding to your customer’s query within 48 seconds to offers the best custome service.  

Why social media response time is essential for every business pages? 

Undoubtedly customer service plays are a cruel role in grabbing user attention. Offering the best customer service enhances brands and business online reputation. Social media response time is one of the important aspects of customer service that has bigger implications.

It is no brainer that every brand and business need to respond to social media queries. And non of them look to purposely ignore the customer query. Below we are listing some reason on what you should focus on social media response time. 

1. Socal media opening new doors for support 

There is no doubt that emails are one of the best ways to communicate with customers for all types of queries. But today customers have started to rely upon social media for basic support.  

In the recent report, intercom stated that 47% of the support team has reported that after the outbreak of COVID19 pandemic inbound volume has increased by an average of 51% and social media is part of that.  

Users have started to notice that email and call back take time and no one wants to wait for long that’s why they prefer social media over other channels. Not only that but there are other reasons that are encouraging customers to rely on social media for support purposes. 

If you scroll Twitter and Facebook then surely you will come across feeds where you will find different users trying to express their problem in the comment section or through tweets. That’s why it is essential to improve your social media response time. 

2. Rapid response helps to gain more loyal customers 

If you want your customer to stick with your brand then you need to focus on offering the best customer service with satisfactory results. Social media response time plays an important role in showcasing your customer service. 

Today with the advanced marketing strategies converting a visitor into paying customers is not a difficult process (only when you are offering valuable products). But in the long run, you need to focus on converting your paying customers into loyal customers. That’s when your customer service comes into the picture.

In a recent survey, Gartner stated that customers are likely to prefer brand and business that offers satisfactory service after their purchase. Converting your paying customer into loyal customers is very much dependent on your social media response time.   

3. Quick response time offers the advantage of becoming competitive in the marketer 

After the outbreak of COVID19 users have started to spend more time on social media and nothing is hidden from them. Being unresponsive on social media platforms not only drive away your customer but it also discourages other users to become your customer. 

On the other hand, offering quick response time helps you to keep your customer away from your competitors. And it also offers you the advantage of being competitive in your industry. Poor customer service drives away customers wheres offering excellent customer service offers a reason to your customer to become your loyal customer.  

Different ways to speed up your social media response time 

1. Collect all your customer’s comments on a single dashboard 

Like other brands and business, you must be having different business pages across various social media platforms. In the early stage-managing, those platforms are not a difficult job. You can easily check different social media platforms and reply to your customer’s queries. 

As your business grows you will likely face more questions and queries from your customers on different special media platforms. Responding to each query quickly becomes difficult for brands and businesses. If you fail to respond to your customer queries quickly then it may leave a bad impression on them are there are chances that your customer may bounce to your competitor service.   

To overcome these types of problems you can gather all the comments and questions on the single dashboard and offer a problem-solving solution. There are various tools offered by social sprout, buffer, and more that you can use for your business. 

If you don’t want to get into all these processes, then you can always reach out to our social media experts that will help you in maintaining your brand reputation across different social media platforms by responding to every customer’s queries across. Not only that but our social media agency also offers all in one service that comes with maintaining all the aspects of social media including engagement, advertising, reputation management, and more. 

2. Make use of stocked messages to solve user concern 

When it comes to answering and solving customer problems and queries then most of the business and brand have good assumptions on what the query can be about. For example, if you are actively answering users queries on social media then you must have come across repeatedly ask queries and questions about your product. 

You might also be aware of the feature where most of the customers can get confused. For both of the situations, it is recommended to create and keep the suggested replies or stocked messages that can save your time and efforts. Repeatedly writing the same thing again and again will not give you any results. 

But keeping stocked messages can speed up your social media response time. While creating the stocked message make sure that it reflects brand voice and message, gives persona touch to your customer, and speeds up your whole process.

As told earlier our social media experts are experienced in identifying and creating stocked messages that offer a balance between speed and personalization.

3. Tell you customer about the right support channel 

Undoubtedly different brands and businesses have different ways to communicate with their customer on social media. Most of them prefer to solve the queries in the same place where customer queries are posted. Whereas there are other brand and business that uses DMs and messenger to communicate and solve customer query. 

It is always recommended to let your customer know the way they can get a better and quicker response. You don’t want to fall in a situation where customers are waiting for your reply in a different place and you are responding to their query in a different place.

In your business page bio, you can tell you customer about how they can communicate with your executive. If DM is the main way to get support with your executive then in business page bio you can mention (To content DM to @xyz) 

4. Make use of chatbot to automate your process 

With the advancement in the technologies, most of the business and brand are investing their time and money in automating their social media pages process by offering chatbot. Earlier we have mentioned If your customer comes across delay in response time frequently then they may bounce to your competitor. 

A chatbot allows you to engage your customers after they place a query or question. Even if a human is handling your social media account it may take a few minutes to respond to customer queries but chatbot automates and speed up response time and engage customers within a few seconds.

A chatbot can handle all the frequently asked question can educate you customer about the product, showcase your knowledge base and it can route the customer to the right communication channel. 

Another interesting part is that anyone can create and set up a fully functioning chatbot. That means gone are those days when chatbots costing enabled only enterprise-level businesses to use its feature. Now even a small and medium-sized business can also access the chatbot feature and automate their process.   

5. Prioritize social media messages depending on the urgency

Every question and query post by a user on soal media need to be answered. Ignoring those messages can result in poor customer service and support which can reflect your brand image and reputation. 

But on social media you will come across different types of messages few may ask for product feature and some may ask for product costing. But other than that there are queries that require your immediate attention as it can affect your brand image, sales, and more. 

You need to prioritize those types of messages which can directly affect your brand and business reputation and image. Your response time will play a crucial role in dealing with those types of messages. 

Hate messages, offensive posts, or damaged product delivery or wrong product delivery are among the messages that can directly affect your reputation and you need to respond to those messages quickly as time will play a major role in bringing things back on track. 

From your previous experience and your competitor’s social media message, identity and prioritize social media messages that you think need to be listed under urgency. Make sure that you resolve or respond to those messages quickly. 

6. Track your social media response time 

If you are active on your social media pages then we don’t have to mention that you will be tracking the growth, engagement rate, followers count, and more to check the success of your social media efforts.

Other than tracking other aspects of social media you can also keep track of your social media average response time. It will give you insight into how satisfied your customers are with your brands and business service. Depending on the tracking econ you can also imporve your response time to offer better results.  

Until you start tracking your response time you will neer know where you are lacking. There are other tools offers by sprout social, buffer, and more that can give you insight about your average response time on different social, media platforms. 

But again partnering with social media experts can bring more value and help you to save your precious time. You can always reach out to our experts to help you with every small aspect of social media marketing and management. 

Conclusion 

Social media response time is one of the curial aspects that helps in establishing a reliable social reputation and relation. Your response time defines your business online presence thet mean the faster you respond to your customer query and question the better results you will get from it. Make use of the above tips to speed up your social media response time to engage your customer quietly so thet they don’t look for other alternatives. 

Image Source

  • https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q2-2016/
  • https://coolerinsights.com/2017/07/grow-social-media-community/social-media-response-time-expected/
  • https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-response-time/