Social media overview

Despite growing popularity, social media is not the preferred customer support method for most consumers. When surveyed, only 16% said they prefer it over email or live chat.

However, businesses recognize that providing social media support can help them grow, as the ratio for answering messages vs. advocacy rate on social media is 9:1. Moreover, 10% of all website traffic comes from social media visitors. As such, 84% of Americans report receiving a social media response from their contacted company.

Contrary to popular belief, social media response times are pretty slow. This could be because most agents do not have access to social media-integrated help desk systems, so they’re not notified whenever they receive messages from customers. Parature’s survey supports this idea, stating that 42% of agents cannot resolve customer queries due to outdated or disconnected systems. As such, customers wait an average of nine hours to receive a response on social media.

Just like any other communication channel, social media has peak hours. For example, most tickets come in between 3pm and 6pm, indicating that social media usage is up after work and school hours.

In terms of social media ticket volumes, our research indicates that the average company receives about 20 social media tickets per day; 10 from Facebook, five from Twitter, four from Instagram, and one from Viber. Around 20% of these tickets are ignored, as they’re considered spam, self-promotional or irrelevant.