Social media has revolutionised customer support for many brands around the world, providing a cost-effective, efficient and proactive tool to manage enquiries, support issues and complaints.

Indeed, as your presence on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook grows, so too will the number of negative comments you receive. Your team will need to identify and separate legitimate complainers from “chancers”, reassure your best customers that their problem will be resolved, stay calm and professional and remember that, at all times, social media is an entirely public medium.

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Did you know that a recent study suggested that 62 percent of consumers have used social media for customer service?

That’s a pretty hefty number. Indeed, brands throughout the world have been turning to social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook in an effort to reduce their support load, cut costs and, ideally, deliver a better experience for customers. By 2020, it is expected that over 90 percent of companies will have integrated social media into their customer care.

What a shame, then, that so many of them are getting it wrong.

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Did you know that 80 percent of companies are planning to incorporate social media into their customer service strategies in 2013?

And with good reason – the public visibility of an enquiry or complaint made online gives the consumer more power than ever, and brands that are slow to respond or (worse) ignore these support channels altogether are likely to pay a very high price indeed.

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Did you know that one out of every five minutes spent online is on a social network?

The business of social media is huge, and it’s getting bigger all the time. The medium has revolutionised the way that brands of all shapes and sizes across almost every industry engage with and inform customers, but perhaps the biggest game-changer is taking place in the world of social customer support.

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A new study has revealed that many of the biggest brands in the U.S., including McDonalds, Starbucks, Coca Cola and Visa, are not providing a high standard of customer support on Twitter, either being slow to reply to enquiries or, in some high-profile cases, not responding at all.

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Did you know that almost three-quarters (71.2 percent) of companies are now using social media for customer support, and that 87.5 percent have seen a positive impact from these channels?

However, while enthusiasm runs high, brands still aren’t putting the necessary resources into place – less than one-quarter (22.4 percent) allocate more than $50,000 per year to social customer support.

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Did you know that nine in ten U.S. companies of 100 employees or more are using social media for marketing?

Impressive number, right? So why is it that so many of them are terrible at using these channels for customer support? While 86 percent of people who complained to a brand on Twitter would have been happy just to get a response – and 75 percent are somewhat or very satisfied when they do – only one third (33 percent) actually hear from the company. And it doesn’t get much better on Facebook, where 25 percent of top retailers never respond to questions from customers, and two in five deleted them completely.

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Cast your mind back, oh, five or ten years, to the days before social media had evolved into the behemoth we know and (mostly) love today.

Back then – in days of yore, as I like to call it – if you wanted online customer support from a brand you had to visit their website, find the contact page and send them an email. Brands that were ahead of their time – and prepared to do the moderation – installed feedback tools and, occasionally, support forums on their sites. Brave as they were, many of these attempts were folly, and plenty of businesses embraced the Get Satisfaction community customer support platform when it launched in 2007.

Fast forward to 2012. Now it’s all social, social, social. Where do most people go online when they’ve got a problem or complaint about a product? To the brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages, right? Wrong. At least according to Get Satisfaction.

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Did you know that social media users who receive excellent service from their favourite brands go on to spend, on average, 21 percent more than non-social customers?

Conversely, 83 percent of socially savvy consumers have walked away from a purchase in the past year after having a negative support experience with brand, compared to just 49 percent of everybody else *.

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