Twitter social customer care demand exceeds Facebook

Airlines are flying high on social media. According to Socialbakers’ latest rankings, airline brands such as KLM are setting an example for other service-based industries in terms of response rate.

The airline industry has the highest response rate on both Facebook and Twitter responding to 76.4% of all in-bound questions on Facebook and 56.3% on Twitter. Not far behind airlines is the finance industry with 76.3% response rate on Facebook and 53.5% on Twitter.

Across all brands, the average response rate in Q4 2013 was 59.4% on Facebook and 40.6% on Twitter. The worst-performing industries were automotive (34.2% / 23.3%) and alcohol (32% / 23.2%).

Interestingly, while Twitter receives more ‘social care demand’ than Facebook – 59.3% relative number of questions versus 40.7% – brands respond more often on Facebook (59.4%) than Twitter (40.6%). Furthermore, retail brands respond more than e-commerce brands (64.2% vs. 58.8%).

“Consumer demand on Twitter pages is trending up overall, and has even surpassed the demand on Facebook,” writes Socialbakers Campaign Content Specialist, William Miller, on the company blog. “When a customer logs a complaint on social media, it’s increasingly likely that he or she will Tweet it to you, rather than post it on your Wall.”

For a summary of Socialbakers’ findings, check out their infographic.