There was a study done in the US and UK on 400 companies to see the statistics of who uses social media sites with their customer service. Studies have recently shown that most businesses are using social media sites as an avenue for customer service. 75 % of the 400 companies that took part in the study said that they were using social media somehow with their customer service.
59% of these organizations have started using Twitter and 60% use Facebook. Out of all of them together, 85% use both of these social media sites. The size of the company does have some influence on how much social media is being used.
40% of the people from businesses that have more than 1000 employees have been using social media for customer service for the past two years. As for other companies that have between 100 and 500 employees, only 53% have just begun to use social media in the past 12 to 24 months.
The principle and founder of thinkJar, Esteban Kolsky, says that social customer service will be around for a very long time. Businesses will eventually have to consider using this method for their customer service. The US was found to be using social channels for customer service a little bit longer than the UK has.
Social customer service came along because there was actually a lot of requests from customers. 71% of customers go online first whenever they have a question or problem. Being able to answer a customers question over the internet is a really good capability now-a-days. 89% of the people who were in the study said that they believe that providing customer service via social media sites is one of the best ideas for their business. 91% believed that it was best for their customers.
Do you think that using social media sites is a good way to help with customer service when dealing with a business? How do you get in touch with a company when there are questions to be answered?