In the joust to win the hearts, minds and most importantly the wallet share of customers the stakes have never been higher thanks to a slow-growth economy where each buyer is golden and they know it, and will go elsewhere if their needs are not met.
The tournament ground is the social channel where the customers are not just spectators but are the judges, who literally give companies their thumbs up or down. The winners receive their patronage and accolades and as for the losers…well.
Alterian recently held such a virtual tournament in the form of a brand study that it had commissioned that analyzed social media customer engagement effectiveness of top brands across six industries: banking, cable, consumer electronics, gaming, mobile and travel.
Key among the study’s findings is a correlation between rapid customer service response times and positive consumer sentiment on social media. Using Alterian’s social media monitoring tool, SM2, the engagement study tracked nearly 350,000 social media mentions over more than six months.
In true jousting tournament practice for each of the six industries included in the study, Alterian researchers picked two competing brands and had them go head-to-head through reaching out to them via Twitter (News - Alert). Brands were asked a variety of standard customer service requests, such as “Can you point me to your price plans online?”
Across all six industries, the brand with the faster response time enjoyed higher favorability ratings during the period studied.
So who gets the thumbs up/down better social media customer service? Here are the results for each industry:
* Banking – Citi bested Bank of America
* Cable – Time Warner (News - Alert) beat Comcast
* Consumer Electronics – Dell surpassed HP
* Gaming – Microsoft (Xbox) outranked Sony (Playstation)
* Mobile – AT&T (News - Alert) edged out Verizon
* Travel – American Airlines outperformed Delta
Based on the study results, Microsoft (News - Alert) was the top performer across all industries. It achieved the highest overall score for social media customer service.
The judging was exacting. Alterian researchers messaged the customer service Twitter account for each brand, asking the same question for brands in the same industry. The time of day was the same for each brand, and response times were averaged. The number of responses (out of a possible 9) and the average response time (ranked from 1 to 12) were added to the volume and sentiment results to get a best possible score of 45.
Alterian analyzed more than 348,000 mentions of 12 major brand names across social media sites from Jan. 1, 2011 until June 16, 2011. It ranked each brand according to volume (number of brand mentions) and sentiment (ratio of positive to negative mentions) on a scale from 1 to 12, with 12 being the top score.
“The results of Alterian’s brand engagement study confirm the importance of social media as a vital customer engagement tool for even the largest organizations,” said Mike Talbot, President of Alterian. “Some of the brands this study looked at are setting the curve for what a social media presence should be, but others are at risk of being left behind. Consumers are taking notice, and brands are being rewarded or punished accordingly.”
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Chris DiMarco