Social support benchmarks

Social media support benchmarks vary across industries. Therefore it’s challenging to provide an accurate snapshot of the channels’ usage and importance. Retail and eCommerce businesses, for instance, receive significantly more social media queries than SaaS firms or healthcare companies which is reflected in their response times.

For example, companies that use social media as one of their primary support channels have a response time of around 15 minutes. On the other hand, the average business responds in 2-4 hours, and the slowest response time recorded was 72 hours. In addition, 50% of customers report getting answers within the first 4 hours of submitting a query, and 90% report receiving a response within the first 24 hours.

To fully understand social media response times, we must break the metric down into individual channels. Our findings show that Twitter and Facebook have an average response time of three hours, Instagram, four hours, and Viber, twelve hours.

These metrics indicate that support via social media is typically two times faster than support via the customer portal but two times slower than support via chat or phone. Moreover, our research suggests that the average first resolution time for social media queries is 24 hours, and the full resolution time is 48 hours.

The average handling time (AHT) for social media queries is five minutes which is relatively brief. During this time, support agents write up their responses and sometimes transfer or escalate the ticket at hand. According to social media benchmarks, only 0.5% of social media tickets are transferred before resolution, and around 10% are escalated to other support channels. Because of this, the cost per contact on social media is pretty low, averaging at $3 per contact.

On average, a business generates around ten new social media tickets each day. Approximately 60% of these social media support queries are from Facebook, 25% from Twitter, 10% from Instagram, and 5% from Viber. Interestingly enough, only 1% of customers turn to social media support after unsuccessfully attempting to resolve their problems via other channels.

In addition to promoting products and answering questions, businesses can use social media to capture leads. In the average company, five unique leads are captured via social media every day. Unfortunately, conversions are relatively low, with just 1% of interested visitors converting.

In general, customers who receive support on social media are pleased with the service they receive. Customer service benchmarks for social media suggest that the average customer satisfaction score is 70%, the average net promoter score is +20, and the average customer effort score is 10.

#SocialMedia
#SupportChannels

An average of

10%

of social media queries are escalated to other support channels. LiveAgent

Social support benchmarks

Social media tickets escalated to other channels

10%

Average response times on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

Social media ticket handle times

5 min

Social media cost per contact

$3

Social media ticket transfers

0.5%

The social media satisfaction rate

70%

Customers switching to social media for service

1%

Social media CSAT

70%

Social media response time bands

50%

Social media first and full resolution time

24 hr

Social media NPS

20

Social media CES

10

Net social media tickets

tentickets

Social media ticket volume by network

Social media conversion rates

1%

Social media lead capture

fiveleads

Social media response times compared to other channels

Fastest, average, and slowest social media response times

15 minutes,

2 hours

72 hours

ten
tickets

five
leads