If you grew up in the United States, chances are that you’ve come in contact with some products from the iconic brands Kraft & Heinz, which merged in 2015 to form the Kraft-Heinz Company.

We were lucky enough to be joined last year at #SMSSummit in Chicago by Social Media Manager James Vetrano, who’s presentation was packed with statistics about how often consumers are using social networks to interact with (or just talk about) brands. Today we are going to highlight five of our favorite statistics from his presentation that show how important it is for brands to have a Social Care strategy.

 

#1 – Millions of Consumers Are Already Talking About You Online

If you have ever used Twitter to call out a company about poor service (or getting forcibly ejected from a flight), you are one of 67% of consumers that use social networks for traditional customer service needs.

As many as 879 million complaints were posted on social media in 2016, which has helped lead to a 250% increase in customer service interactions on Twitter over the last two years.

 

#2 – Great Customer Service Increases Brand Loyalty

When you walk into a local business and are greeted by a friendly employee, who makes it their mission to make sure you leave satisfied, are you more likely to come back to that store? Most likely.

The same idea applies to companies who maintain a digital presence. If your company has a well-crafted, and a well-executed social care strategy, your customer retention rate could be close to 94%. If more than 9 out of 10 of your customers return for another visit, that’s pretty good. In fact, customers say they are 3x more likely to recommend a brand to friends after having a positive social experience.

#3- Happy Customers Spend More $$$

In addition to maintaining existing customers and having them spread the word to their friends, a positive social experience will also increase the average spend of your existing customers.

This seems pretty intuitive. If you go to a restaurant and the service sucks, you probably aren’t going to order an extra drink or spring for dessert. However, if your server has been friendly and accommodating, you are more likely to stay a little longer (and spend more $$$).

#4 – Social Care Is Cheaper Than Traditional Customer Service

Customer care through social media is disrupting the traditional call center model.

If you take a minute to think about all of the overhead that comes along with having to staff huge call centers in order handle your company’s customer service needs, it starts to make sense why it’s 8x cheaper to handle customer service through social media rather than the traditional models.

Who doesn’t want to save money while more quickly, & effectively satisfying your customers needs?

#5 – You Can Scale The Unscalable

How many times have you needed customer service assistance but had to wait on hold for an hour because “all of our customer representatives are currently busy”?

This is because traditional call center models require one customer service representative per customer with a problem. One on one interaction is definitely a good thing, but improvements in messenger technologies & social media have allowed brands to handle up to 10 cases per customer service representative (at one time).

Not only does a social care strategy save you money, but it also saves you time, which saves you more money. Most importantly, it speeds up response time to customer service inquiries, which keeps your customers happy and loyal to your brand.

 

 

If you want to hear the Q&A session that we had with James last year after his session at #SMSsummit Chicago. Listen below and let us know your thoughts on social care and how it can be integrated into our social media marketing strategies.

 

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