30 Percent of Top Brands Now Have Dedicated Twitter Customer Service Handles

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Simply Measured announced today that the world’s top brands are responding to the growing need for dedicated customer service accounts on Twitter.

“With more and more consumers using Twitter to get help and make decisions, it’s important for brands to maintain an open communication channel and measure their customer service efficacy”

The company’s quarterly study of Twitter customer service engagement found that among the Interbrand 100, requests for customer support on the social network have increased by 25 percent, and those brands have responded by increasing their activity by 33 percent. In total, 30 percent of top brands now have dedicated customer service handles on Twitter, demonstrating a growing desire to divert negative attention and activity away from their primary brand account.

Over the last quarter, these 30 brands have received more than 198,000 inbound tweets, and sent out more than 82,000 support responses. Existing research¹ shows that 42 percent of users on Twitter expect a response to their customer service issue in under an hour. In an effort to meet these expectations, 61 percent of tweets received by the top 30 brands are responded to in an hour or less.

Among top brands that have adopted a customer service handle, Ford and Nike top the list, replying to more than 70 percent of inbound Tweets. Microsoft is the only brand that regularly responds to each issue in under an hour, with UPS and American Express following close on the tech giant’s heels.

“With more and more consumers using Twitter to get help and make decisions, it’s important for brands to maintain an open communication channel and measure their customer service efficacy,” said Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of Simply Measured. “Twitter had more than 288 million users at the beginning of 2013. Top companies are paying attention to that and investing to respond and support their customers on Twitter.”

Simply Measured’s analytics and reporting capabilities allow brands to track customer service activity in relation to their main brand account, including traffic, response time and rate, keyword analysis and more.

To analyze any customer service profile for free, visit: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/customer-service#report-258

About Simply Measured

Simply Measured brings social media analytics to life. The company’s measurement and reporting solution aggregates social media data and web analytics from more than a dozen sources and presents it in a single dashboard that is easy to access on the fly and share across a team. More than 30 unique reports can be created in real-time and pushed to familiar tools such as Excel or PowerPoint with the click of a button. Simply Measured is trusted by more than 25 percent of the top 100 global brands and more than 50,000 users. Learn more at http://simplymeasured.com.

¹ The Social Habit: http://socialhabit.com/uncategorized/customer-service-expectations/