30% of top brands have dedicated customer service account on Twitter

Among the Interbrand Top 100 brands, 30% now have accounts on Twitter that are purely for customer service interactions. Those 30 brands were found to have received more than 198,000 inbound Tweets in the last quarter and send out over 82,000 responses.

But, why are brands using a separate account from their main Twitter presence? Perhaps as a way of keeping negative activity away from the primary account. At the end of the day, the reason for so many brands adopting Twitter as a customer service platform is that they are able to quickly resolve issues.

Top of the brands using Twitter for customer service are Ford and Nike, both of which reply to more than 70% of inbound Tweets. However, the average response rate was 45%, found Simply Measured and just 10% of the dedicated customer service accounts had a response time of less than an hour.

"With more and more consumers using Twitter to get help and make decisions, it's important for brands to maintain an open communication channel and measure their customer service efficacy," said Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of Simply Measured. "Top companies are paying attention to that and investing to respond and support their customers on Twitter."

Tags: customer service, research, response strategy, social analytics, Twitter