Less than an hour. That’s what they’ll tell you. Who’s ‘they?’ Blogs, articles, certain studies. Ask any digital marketing executive – social media for business is not fun and games, even if it might seem like that at the outset. Responding within an hour is not easy! While I can personally whine about dwindling attention spans and the repercussions of instant gratification, as a marketer I must succumb to these consumer realities.
Replying to DMs? Time constraints are always going to be there!
Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/time-timer-clock-watch-hour-488112/
If you’re a biggie
Back to the hour. About 50-70% of consumers expect a brand to respond within 60 minutes. The percentage varies depending on the study conducted, sample size, geographies, type of consumer message (e.g. a complaint is expected to be responded to quicker than a message asking for information), etc. For larger organizations that invest heavily in social media for business, managing turnaround time isn’t a big deal. They have already invested in customer service functions that simply needed to be expanded to social media platforms. What’s more, large organizations can also easily invest in AI-driven technology such as chatbots to cater to a basic list of queries, much like older IVR technology does on the phone.
If you’re in retail
What do you do if you’re a smaller organization and don’t have the appetite to invest in a customer service function for social media? If you’re in the retail or B2C space, I have bad news for you. Your customers want to hear from you ASAP. Unless your target audience is 45+ in age, you are in a very competitive space. Your customers may very easily switch to a brand that replies quickly, because that is an indicator of high service levels. The one hour rule continues to apply to you. Suit up or go bust.
If you’re in the B2B segment
Brands in the B2B segment can breathe relatively easy. You can take up to one business day to respond, though 4-5 hours will earn you extra brownie points. Anything longer than one business day will result in a loss of potential customers. We made this mistake once. We took one week to respond to a lead on Instagram. The team missed the message, somehow, and it’s no surprise that we could not convert the lead to a customer. As a rule, I’ll suggest that you use an automatic responder or a chatbot for preliminary conversations. According to Accenture, 80% of customer engagements can be handled by bots, and using this technology comes at quite a realistic price nowadays. The Microsoft Azure bot, for example, is priced anywhere between free to Rs. 33 per 1000 messages.
Social media for business needs nurturing. This means you have to build a team or outsource your social media to really leverage its benefits. Simply posting content or running ads does not encapsulate all the tasks required to keep your customers engaged. True engagement also means responding to customer queries, feedback and complaints on time. Did I answer your question?
