A study has found that many organisations are choosing old school methods such as post as a new communications channel for their customers in favour of social media.
The survey, conducted by Shape the Future and commissioned by Azzurri Communications, found that in the last year only 5% of companies added Facebook as a new channel, compared with 35% who added post. It suggests that although 40% of companies offer Facebook as an option for their customers, it may have reached its peak.
In another blow to Facebook, Twitter has seen a significant growth, as 48% of companies use Twitter for customer service, with 40% only adding Twitter in the last year.
Rufus Grig, chief technology officer, Azzurri Communications, commented on the findings: "Those organisations that fail to join the dots of their customer interactions risk losing customers, as they will simply move to another firm that is more organised. Customers want to interact with the organisations that serve them by whichever means is the most convenient for them, but they hate having to repeat themselves across every channel."
Although 65% of organisations agree that the best solution for handling multiple communication channels is an integrated all-in-one system, only 27% have implemented multi-channel communications systems into their contact centres.
All of the organisations surveyed currently offer telephone as a channel to their customers, followed closely by email (92%) and post (69%). Face-to-face is offered by 52% of organisations, followed closely by Twitter (48%) and Facebook (40%).
"While Facebook adoption has slowed down considerably in the last year, we do not believe that social media has reached its saturation point as a legitimate communications channel for organisations," continues Grig. "We believe the slowdown is due to organisations struggling to deliver good customer service as they wrestle with an apparently ever-growing number of communications channels. Without a joined up view of their customers they are unable to respond accurately or quickly enough to their customers’ demands. If organisations are to meet their customers’ demands for timely and effective service via social media and all other channels, they must centralise all of their channels into one, integrated system within their contact centres."
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