Reality Check: Only Six Percent Seek Social Media Feedback

Most large US companies are not currently using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to gather customer feedback, according to the findings of a study conducted by research technology firm MarketTools. Some of them aren't using any other medium either...

The company used its CustomerSat and ZoomPanel solutions to survey 810 executives at companies with annual revenue greater than $100m.

Most (94%) of the companies surveyed said that they are not using social media to gather feedback from their customers, while more than half (51%) are using e-mail and online surveys, nearly a third (28%) are using formal phone surveys, and the same amount (28%) are using informal phone calls.

'Despite the fact that social media channels represent a rich, continuous stream of customer feedback, few organizations are equipped to take advantage of this channel,' stated Justin Schuster, VP of Enterprise Products.

The MarketTools study also revealed a disparity in the way companies think and the way they act with regard to customer satisfaction.

Although 92% of respondents believe that satisfied customers are very important or extremely important to their company's bottom line, fewer than half (42%) solicit customer feedback on a continuous basis, and more than one-fifth (22%) invite feedback only once a year or not at all.

Fourteen percent said their companies don't gather customer feedback at all, and more than half (56%) said their companies do not have, or they are not sure if their companies have, a formal voice of the customer (VOC) program. Nearly one out of every four (24%) said that they seldom or never use customer feedback to change a business process.

Conversely, 39% said their companies increased focus on customer satisfaction in 2010 versus 2009, with 21% stating that they invested more in customer satisfaction-related products and services this year.

Web site: www.markettools.com .


Editor's note: Interestingly, 6% is also the proportion of the US population who use Twitter, according to findings from the Pew Center last week - and 50% of these do not use it more than once a month, leaving just 3% regular users: to our minds, a remarkably low figure considering the non-stop mentions of it in the media and the phenomenal awareness that must create. Perhaps a bit of a wake-up call for a large number in research and the media who seem to think everyone's using it. While on that topic, are these 3% representative? See one recent study which suggests maybe not.