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Do you provide proper customer service via social media? I’m not just talking about saying thanks for your feedback or sorry that happened, I mean really trying to solve problems, and fix your processes so it doesn’t happen again.  YOU BETTER BE because customers are increasingly turning to social media to voice their concerns so it is imperative that businesses start listening and engaging with them.  According to new data released from social media management tool Sprout Social, brands receive 175% more messages than they did a year ago one year ago and user engagement is “growing nearly nine times faster than the social networks themselves.” So what else to do but create a lovely infographic to convey all these amazing statistics! But first, some more amazing text explaining it all…

With engagement outpacing network growth at such an exponential rate, it’s crucial for brands to start re-evaluating their social media strategy to make sure that they are taking care of their customers and engaging more frequently. Currently, “4 in 5 consumer inquiries now go unanswered”, and that response rate appear to be dropping. This is really unacceptable if you want to not only attract customers, but keep them.

If all that hasn’t convinced you of this pressing need, here are some pretty compelling stats:

• Twitter and Facebook grew their collective active user base by 20% in the past 12 months (to more than 1.4 billion)
• User engagement is growing 9x as fast as Twitter and Facebook combined
• Utilities such as cable, cellular and Internet providers see the most inbound engagement and are generally ahead of the curve in using social for customer care
• Highly competitive industries such as retail, automotive, banking/finance, utilities and technology are leading the way with consumer engagement
• People prefer to use Facebook to engage with automotive and retail brands, while Twitter is the platform of choice for Entertainment, Government and Technology brands
• Each month brands see on average 60 messages per 1000 followers on Twitter versus 39 messages per 1000 fans on Facebook

There’s a lot more data contained within The Sprout Social Index (which the infographic below is based from) that further explores social engagement and customer care.  It gives you a good idea which industries are more efficient with their customer service on social media as well as a bunch of other handy little tid bits. And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the infographic. Because nobody can ever get enough of statistics and infographics. Right? Right.

“The Social Customer Infographic” by Sprout Social

So that’s pretty much why you need to be getting a lot more buttoned up with your customer care and customer service via social media channels. Sometimes being active in social media can hurt your brand more than help it if you aren’t interacting in the right ways. So get out there and look after your customers on Facebook and Twitter!

Can I get a hallelujah?! No? Ok, well anyway that customer service stuff is still important.

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