Is It Necessary To Provide 24/7 Responses To Customer Contacts On Social Media?
Survey research has suggested that customers want almost immediate responses from companies when they contact them on social media. What does that mean for companies?
Not much. These survey results indicate a desire for something that most customer realize is impossible. Their responses indicate a desire, but not necessarily a deal breaker when it comes to purchases.
It IS an advantage to be able to respond quickly, around the clock, but the problem is that for many companies — any but the multi-nationals with staff located around the world, it’s not cost effective to do so.
So What To Do?
The critical issue is to ensure that your contact hours and response times are clear, obvious, and well posted everywhere you exist on the Internet — on your social media accounts, and web sites.
It’s not enough, for example, to have webchat on your site that displayes when nobody is available. You have to tell visitors WHEN someone WILL be available.
It’s probably not enough to have your response hours posted on your Twitter page — you probably need to post response hours several times each day via your tweets.
You get the idea. Clear, frequent communication is more important than meeting impossible, and usually unimportant customer desires.
Customers understand, particularly when you help them decide when and how to contact you.
