Brands’ Facebook Response Rates Leveling Off This Year

October 25, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Customer Service & Experience | Digital | Social Media

Socialbakers-Facebook-Brand-Response-Rates-Q2-2012-Q3-2013-Oct201376% of the world’s most “socially devoted” brands believe that social customer service is an ROI driver, per recent survey results, and brands are recognizing the importance of social media for customer service. Response rates to questions posed of brands on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been on the rise, but new data from Socialbakers provided to MarketingCharts suggest that response rates are leveling off. In fact, in Q3, brands answered an average of 63.5% of questions posed on their Facebook walls, a negligible increase from Q2’s 62% and Q1’s 60%.

The growth looks more impressive when compared to the year-earlier period (Q3 2012), when 48% of questions were answered, and even more so compared to Q2 2012, when just 30% of questions were answered. But the data shows that so far this year the growth in response rates has been much more incremental.

To be sure, brands are dealing with a rapid increase in the number of questions posed of them, with that volume up by 56% year-over-year in Q3 2013. But most of those questions appear to be concentrated among a few brands. In its latest data release, Socialbakers – which considers a brand to be “socially devoted” if it answers 65% of questions posed to it on social media – reveals that an “elite” 10% of brands handle 85% of questions posed on Facebook, with the corresponding figure for Twitter an even more astounding 89%.

In terms of the industries for which users are seeking the most social care, Socialbakers indicates that 36% of questions asked on Facebook and Twitter are directed to the telecom industry, with retail (16% on Facebook; 15% on Twitter) and electronics (15% on Facebook; 13% on Twitter) next on the list.

Telecom brands so far aren’t hitting the mark. Only 20% of those tracked can be considered “socially devoted,” while 15% provide some level of social care (receiving 1 or more questions, with 1 or more responses) and the remaining 65% offering no social care at all (meaning that they receive 1 or more questions, but do not respond to them).

It might be time for a change: recent survey results suggest that a majority of Millennials around the world agree that “it annoys me if I don’t get a fast response from a company or brand I contact via Facebook, Twitter, or another social media channel.” One can only imagine the frustration if those questions are simply ignored…

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