People all over the world are involved with some form of social media or another. It may be tweeting or Facebooking or Instagramming or Yelping—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that people are online and are engaging with brands and with each other.
Many brands are engaged with social media as well. And there are others that are not “social,” for a multitude of reasons. “It requires too many resources to do it right.” “We can’t decide where is the best place to start, so we just won’t start.” “There’s too much negative feedback and it could damage our brand.”
That last reason is a common perception. With so many people turning to online resources to find information and recommendations, it can be scary for a brand to put itself out there. What if someone writes a negative review, or posts a negative video, and it spreads around the world? What if one person makes a comment and loads of others pile on and it spins out of control? It’s difficult for a brand to recover when something like that happens.
Fortunately, that common perception is becoming less common—or less accurate, at any rate. According to the latest Customer Service Benchmark results from eDigitalResearch, social media users would rather post positive feedback than a complaint. More social media users have sent positive feedback than negative in the past year, and the numbers will likely continue to grow.
Social media in general is growing in popularity and adoption for customer service purposes. eDigitalResearch posits that is because social media makes it quick and easy to contact a brand—much quicker and easier than dialing a toll-free number, working through an automated system, repeating information to multiple agents and waiting on hold. The speed and ease of social media mean brands can also quickly and easily engage with customers—thanking them, offering personal assistance to resolve an issue or simply liking their post/tweet/review/comment.
It’s an interesting turn of events that positivity is growing. Negativity commands more air time and sharing, just as unfortunate an element of human nature. Perhaps this is an indication that we (people in general) want to be more positive? And want to share positive information? And appreciate good customer service when we experience it? One can only hope.
Image courtesy of Master Isolated Images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
