Despite increasing numbers of customers using Twitter to publicly complain about brands, the vast majority of companies respond in the exact same way….with the quiet of contempt.
New research from Maritz and Evolve24 of 1,298 Twitter complainants found that only 29% of those tweet gripes were replied to by the companies in question.
This is a direction of duty, in my estimation. As we discussed in The NOW Revolution, brands must look at these new channels as the “social telephone” and ignoring these 140 character cries for help is a flawed decision for two reasons.
First, responding to Twitter complaints can turn lemons into lemonade. The Maritz study found that 83% of the complainants that received a reply liked or loved the fact that the company responded.
