November 2012
Featured in this insight: IT & telecommunications
Survey discovers Britons rate social media poorly for customer support: A survey on behalf of customer service technology company Portal has demonstrated that UK consumers still prefer interacting with businesses via email and phone, rather than social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Just 2% of the respondents who took part in the study voted for social media as their preferred method of contact with businesses, compared to 52% who prefer email and 19% who opt for phone communication.
To provide a comparison, the surveyants were also asked about their preferred method of contact two years ago, in 2011 and currently – email was still the most popular method of communication in 2010, however its popularity over phone contact increased dramatically last year.
The market research further questioned 503 UK businesses about their preferred mode of communication when dealing with customers support issues. It was revealed that 42% of businesses prefer face-to-face interaction, 32% prefer email and just 3% chose social media.
Portal CEO, Shamus Kelly, commented on the findings: "Our research revealed some startling statistics. We suspect that social media platforms aren’t taking off as favoured customer service channels because, more often than not, complaints are too complex to explain in a short post."
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