Brands don't answer half of questions asked on Facebook

Airlines, finance the most responsive, alcohol and automotive brands respond the least

If you’re like me, then you are a fan of many different companies on Facebook. I Liked these pages for many different reasons, mostly to get deals they were offering at the time, or to be able to print out their weekly coupon. It honestly never occurred to me to actually try to get customer service on a Facebook page. I figured it would either be ignored, or get lost in the shuffle.

Turns out that I was half right about that.

Results

While only 48% of questions on Facebook pages are being responded to, at least it has seen a vastimprovement over previous years, increasing a full 60% in just three months. In 2011 inly 5% were being answered, so while there is a long way to go, it brands are moving in the right direction.

"Companies now respond to 48% of questions in social media. We hope it will hit an almost ideal 75% early next year," Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, said in a statement.

When broken down by industry, I was surprised to see that it was the airline industry that topped the list, as one of the few industries that could be called socially devoted. The responsiveness of the airlines has actually improved quarter to quarter, going up from 55%.

I was frankly less surprised when I looked a little deeper and found that, when SocialBaker reported the top five airlines last quarter, not a single one of them was based in the United States. 

The only other two socially devoted industries: finance and telecom, which respond to 65.7% and 65.5% of their customer's questions, respectively. 

The brands least likely to be responsive: automotive, which answer only 26% of questions. It should be noted, though, that that is much higher than the previous quarter, when only 5.2% were being answered. So, once again, there is a lot of room for them to do better, but it is still a major improvement.

Doing only slightly better are the alcohol and electronics industries. Alcohol answers 30.8% or questions, while the electronic industry answers 34.2%.

Socialbaker created Socially Devoted in order to help companies that have created official social networks to work with and for its customers, and works with them to improve customer relations.

Socialbaker, measures how “socially devoted,” certain industries are. Being socially devoted means that the fan page has an open wall, and that at least 65% of questions are responded to in a timely manner. While Socialbaker says that the current industry benchmark for answering a question is over a whole day, brands should be aiming at answering them withing 10 to 30 minutes.

"Depending on the nature of your service, you might want to consider 24/7 support, which is easily done over social networks," Socialbaker writes.

Right now Socialbaker focuses on Facebook, but says that its service can also apply to other social networks, such as Twitter, Google+, or YouTube.

"For us, this is not another campaign; this is not a shot in the dark. This is something that companies have to do in order to properly behave toward and engage their customers. We will continue to develop this standard and increase its relevance, work on more rankings, while discovering more details about user / company interactions. The social marketing industry is about interacting with your fans, answering their questions to build engagement and loyalty," the company says.

(Image source: https://sociallydevoted.socialbakers.com/)