MarketTools, online market research company has published a new study of social networks, whose biggest finding is that almost a quarter of companies (23 percent to be exact) provides a customer service and support through Facebook, and a little more than a tenth of the companies (12 percent) provides customer service and support through Twitter.
MarketTools conducted the study in September 2011 through surveys of executives of companies with annual revenues of more than 10 million dollars. It is not clear how many companies were invited to participate, but in the end there were 331 completed surveys.
The study found that 34 percent of executives surveyed said they were aware of customers who use social media to comment or complain about their company and their products. Despite this, less than a quarter of these executives said that their companies “always” respond to these clients. However, 33 percent of them said that their companies have a greater focus on using social networks to capture customer feedback compared to the same period last year.
Of the 68 percent of the companies that have an active presence in the social networks, Facebook tends to be the first option. 48 percent have an active Facebook presence, 24 percent have a Twitter account, and only 17 percent use their own company blog.
Interestingly, only 22 percent of respondents said that their company’s CEO regularly participates in social media on behalf of the company. Facebook is once again the social media channel of choice: 68 percent of CEOs use Facebook, 44 percent participate in the company’s blog, and 35 percent participate in Twitter.
On the one hand, 95 percent of respondents believe that satisfied customers are very important or extremely important to their company. On the other, only 36 has programs to collect and analyze the comments of customers, and of the companies, almost half (45 percent) request the opinion of the client quarterly or less frequently.
“Companies are increasingly adopting social networks as a way to interact with their customers, even though they are losing the opportunity to correctly use this information.” Karin Adams, Product Director of the company at MarketTools, said in a statement. “Organizations that use the collected feebcack are able to analyze information obtained through social media channels, along with information obtained through more traditional channels, to discover points of view that help improve business processes that lead to greater overall customer satisfaction. “