Lockdown: Companies with good service on social media - and those without

Consumer journalist Wendy Knowler investigates which companies are meeting their customers’ needs on social media.

South African consumers under Covid-19 lockdown are turning to social media en masse to get customer service, according to the latest BrandsEye report.

The report’s authors found a 150% increase in social media conversation across six South African industries (banking, retail, telecommunications, insurance, pharmacies and Internet Service Providers) analysed by BrandsEye since President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a National State of Disaster on 15 March.

BrandsEye made its findings based on almost a million social media posts between 1 March and 2 April.

There is an unprecedented demand for digital customer service in South Africa right now and this is likely to grow in the weeks ahead. It’s proving challenging for businesses who are looking for new ways to provide effective service to anxious customers. The likes of the pharmacies are not used to such high volumes of customer queries online. To improve their response rate and time, organisations that are able to empower their remote social teams with the requisite permissions and tools, and prioritise customer service issues will be able to maintain business continuity and mitigate reputational risk associated with poor service.

Nic Ray, CEO - BrandsEye

Key findings of the report:

• Industries are struggling to respond to consumer queries amid increased online conversation. Across all industries, the rate of response to customer posts that require attention dropped by 26.6% after 15 March. Banks suffered from the largest response rate drop of 39.2%.

• Banks, insurers and pharmacies’ social media response time have worsened.

• Supermarkets, telcos and ISPs are improving the speed of responding to customers. Supermarket retail conversation saw the largest industry volume increase of 300% after 15 March.

• Pharmacies and retailers had the highest proportion of conversation about COVID-19 and also had the lowest “Net Sentiment” about the pandemic.

The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield interviewed consumer journalist Wendy Knowler.

For more detail, listen to the interview in the audio below.

This article first appeared on CapeTalk : Lockdown: Companies with good service on social media - and those without

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