In a society where many believe “if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself,” customers located around the world who are facing a problem with a product or just desiring to voice a complaint due to subpar service tend to turn to social media websites such as Twitter (News - Alert) to get a fast response. However, a recent study released just today from STELLAService shows that too often service questions to companies go completely unanswered via Twitter.
However, there are two shiny stars in the group of online retailers that are fielding and successfully responding to an array of customer issues and they are Zappos.com and LLBean.com.
An independent company with the sole focus of measuring and rating the customer service performance of online retailers; STELLAService has a large number of full-time mystery shoppers in place within online retail locations around the nation. These mystery shoppers evaluate ecommerce sites on hundreds of metrics. Their findings then enable companies to clearly see the areas in which they need drastic improvements whether it is in customer support or something else.
For this particular study, STELLAService’s mystery shoppers tweeted varied customer service questions directly to the Twitter accounts of prominent retailers on a daily basis for 45 days, keeping a close watch on how often and who answered in a prompt manner.
Sadly, findings point out that only Zappos.com and LLBean.com were highlighted for replying to every single tweet within a 24 hour period. The top five most reliable companies that took to Twitter to assist their customers included Overstock.com (who got back to 98 percent of all tweets within 24 hours), Dell (News - Alert).com (98 percent), and Best Buy (89 percent).
In total, however, when analyzing the top 25 retailers, a mere 44 percent of customer Tweets were even acknowledged. Probably not the best idea when a customer can easily turn to a competitor, right?
STELLAService CEO Jordy Leiser stated this research proves that too many retailers are not paying enough attention to keeping loyal shoppers around for the long term and are severely lacking in the customer service department.
"It’s becoming clear that social media savvy consumers are an incredibly important segment of any company’s customer base, both because they have higher service expectations and they have wide broadcast networks for sharing their experiences with others,” Leiser said in a statement. “By failing to take Twitter seriously as a customer service channel, companies may be inadvertently ignoring some of their best customers at their own peril.”
Back in 2010, TMCnet reported that L.L. Bean, Overstock and Zappos.com were ranked as the top three companies offering stellar customer service to consumers overall. It looks like these companies clearly know what is most important – reducing customer churn and keeping a smile upon faces that are guaranteed to spend money on their products.