Last updated on September 25th, 2015 at 03:32 pm
Twitter is taking aim at customer engagement and personalized brand marketing with the release of a new report, the “Customer Service on Twitter Playbook”.
It look at how customers are engaging more with brands on Twitter, especially for customer service issues (or social care, as it’s also known), and how brands are responding to those requests, often in innovative ways.
While the report is mainly geared towards B2C brands, B2B marketers can draw insights from the overall trends and opportunities presented for customer service on Twitter (also known as social care).
Consumers like and value social care
In a two-year period, tweets directed at leading B2C companies, brands, and service accounts increased 2.5 times. According to the report 47 percent of social media users have sought social customer service on various social networks.
Customer service on Twitter gives B2B firms a rare opportunity to interact 1-on-1 with their audience, having open and transparent conversations in the public eye. More than 95 percent of consumers say they’re influenced by what others say about brands on social media.
Companies save money with social care
Solving a customer problem on Twitter costs B2C brands an average of $1, or one-sixth of what it costs to solve it through a call center. Brands also see up to a 35 percent reduction in the amount of industry ombudsman complaints because they’re able to respond more quickly and satisfactorily to customer issues.
According to the report, digital-only care beats non-digital care by 19 percent in customer satisfaction surveys.
Why is this important to B2B marketers?
- It’s where the B2B audience is. With increasing numbers of users on Twitter (over 316 million active users each month) and more than 500 million tweets being sent every day, it’s no surprise the platform is one of the leading social media platforms for B2B brand mentions.
- Providing better customer experience (CX) leads to overall increased business benefits. Improved customer satisfaction, increased sales, and improved customer retention. Companies that embrace social media and social care will enjoy all of these improvements.
- B2B brands are spending more on social media than ever before. Sixty-four percent of them intend to increase their investment in CX because they understand the impacts of the benefits previously mentioned. Companies are starting to work with social media teams full-time, monitoring their platforms 24/7.
- Companies will continue to evolve their social media offerings, leading to increased competition online. When companies like KLM take their social media programs to another level by offering a secure payment option to purchase tickets via Facebook or Twitter, others have to take notice.
- Direct interaction with customers (or B2B brands) will reduce barriers to sales. The B2B sales cycle is long and requires many different pieces of marketing content. Social care and interaction via Twitter gives both B2B buyers and vendors a direct communication channel with each other that replaces other channels like the phone or even email. Conversations on social media feel less forced and less sales-y, and give vendors an opportunity to give out just the right amount of information their audiences craves.
As Twitter’s user base continues to grow, the need for social care by brands in any market, B2C or B2B, will increase. Those that adapt to the changing use of social media will success, while those that don’t, will be left behind.
