Ignoring Social Media Interaction will negatively impact sales
One of the main advantages of social media is that it makes it possible to have a two-way interaction with consumers (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). With social media, marketing is no longer restricted to people watching, reading, or listening to advertisements to make a purchase. Consumers can find a whole lot of information on the internet about a particular product before purchasing it. They now have the option of contacting the company through the social media. However, if the brand does not respond to messages from consumers, it can negatively affect their sales.
According to a study conducted by Sprout Social (2017), 81% of consumers believe that social media has enhanced the accountability of businesses. When a consumer sends a message on social media, the conversation does not remain only between the person and the brand, exposing the positive or negative message to all. The entire world witnesses how a brand or company answers a question or complaint raised by a consumer (Cha, 2021). In such a situation, not responding to a consumer on social media can impact brand confidence and reputation negatively. 77% of users feel more positive about a brand after their Tweet is replied to (MCCREADY, 2019).
Apart from responding to every customer query and complaint, it is also extremely crucial to do it quickly. 71% of online customers expect to receive a reply from the brand within five minutes of reaching out to them (Epstein, 2013). Brands should not make customers, especially angry customers, wait. Response to negative comments should be given within 2 hours of a customer posting a comment, especially a negative one (Baker, n.d.). If a response is not given quickly, customers are likely to stop buying from the brand and at the same time, will also let others in their circle know about their negative experience.
“71% of online customers expect to receive a reply from the brand within five minutes of reaching out to them”
There are also regulations in place which demand regular monitoring of Social Interactions: companies are required to respond and log any human safety incidents or adverse events caused by their products regardless of where that digital interaction takes place. Due to the difficulty in monitoring and identifying issues across multiple social accounts, many brands may opt to close a social account rather than fund monitoring burden. The risk of not implementing an appropriate monitoring solution is that some interactions including adverse events go unreported and not managed — to the ill effect of both. Company and Consumer.
With social media, it is possible for brands to have two-way communication (Singh, 2020). If a brand does not respond to the queries and concerns of consumers, their confidence in the company may lower, and they may not consider the company reliable (Cha, 2021). However businesses today may start to struggle with data overload and the burden of manually checking messages & comments without computer augmentation.
ReviZor can assist businesses whichever approach they choose to take. If a business decided to opt out from communications with the social media users, ReviZor will monitor all platforms, all pages and all posts to make sure they have disabled all possible methods of interaction, removing their exposure to regulatory risk. If the business choses to engage with their customers ReviZor serves to the business every comment, review or message across all social accounts into one place. With state of art machine learning and AI, ReviZor can also identify and flag human safety incidents as soon as they are posted, including e-mail / live chat alerts, allowing the business to act in a timely manner.
For more information about how Revizor can support your business monitor its digital assets – email info@uptitude.co.uk
By Yauheniya Tyler, Psychology BSc.
References:
Baker, A. (n.d.). How Brands Handle Negative Comments on Social Media. [online] www.socialpilot.co.
Available at: https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/negative-comments-social-media
Cha, C. (2021). Why and How Should Brands Respond to Customers on Social Media? [online] blog.brandbastion.com.
Available at: https://blog.brandbastion.com/why-how-respond-to-customers-social-media.
Epstein, J. (2013). Social Customer Service (Infographic). [online] Getambassador.com.
Available at: https://www.getambassador.com/blog/social-customer-service-infographic.
MCCREADY, R. (2019). 80+ Branding Statistics You Should Know For 2020. [online] Venngage.
Available at: https://venngage.com/blog/branding-statistics/#6 [Accessed 6 Jul. 2021].
Singh, R. (2020). Social Media and Consumer buying Behaviour: Issues & Challenges. [online]
Available at: https://www.ijert.org/research/social-media-and-consumer-buying-behaviour-issues-challenges-IJERTCONV8IS10013.pdf.
Sprout Social. (n.d.). The Sprout Social Index, Edition XII: Call-out Culture. [online]
Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q3-2017/
Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S. (2014). (PDF) Brand Strategies in Social Media. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262575006_Brand_Strategies_in_Social_Media