Commentary

More Customer Service Moving To Social Media

Customer service is rapidly migrating from the telephone to an array of digital channels, led by social media, Web chat, mobile apps, and online video, reflecting customers’ evolving technology and expectations. That’s according to a new report from Dimension Data, which surveyed 901 organizations with customer contact centers in 72 countries around the world about their plans for the next two years. 

Overall, 87% of the customer contact centers surveyed said they expect the volume of “non-voice” traffic, meaning customer service via all digital channels, to increase over the next two years. Meanwhile, 42% of contact centers said they expect voice traffic via telephones to drop over the same period.

Accordingly Dimension Data forecasts that the volume of digital traffic of all kinds will pass voice traffic some time in the next two years, even as the overall volume of customer engagement continues to increase, with 74% of contact centers expecting more transactions.

The customer service landscape is changing fast, as reflected in consumers’ sometimes confused, inconsistent, or just plain unsatisfied perceptions of social media.

Last year, for example, a survey conducted by Ovum and Coleman Parkes found that 50% of consumers prefer social media to the telephone for customer service, and the same proportion have tried to communicate with companies on social media for customer service issues -- but three-quarters of these say they either never received a response or didn’t get their problem resolved, forcing most of them to pick up the phone.  

Yet another survey by NewVoiceMedia in 2013 found that telephone is still the favored customer service channel for 59% of U.S. consumers, compared to 19% for email and 13% for social media. NewVoiceMedia also found that 27% of Gen Y-ers favored social media for customer service.

1 comment about "More Customer Service Moving To Social Media ".
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  1. Kevin Horne from Verizon, February 24, 2015 at 5:17 p.m.

    Why does the headline say "moving to social media" when the survey data says it is moving to "digital channels" of which social media is only a fragment?

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