Editor’s note: Terry Vavra and Douglas Pruden are senior partners at the consultancy Customer Experience Partners. Vavra is based in Richmond, Va. He can be reached at vavra@customerexperiencepartners.com. Pruden is based in Wilmington, N.C. He can be reached at pruden@customerexperiencepartners.com. 

Social media is a major force in marketing, from promotion to brand building and customer care. Sometimes the application is compatible with those objectives, other times it’s a forced fit. Earlier this year Goran Dautovic wrote an article that compiles a wealth of findings relevant to the issue of customer service, technology and customer satisfaction. Today, we want to dig in and share several factoids from the story. With that, we offer this discussion for your insight. 

Social media … for customer service? 

One of the emerging trends in business management seems to be the broadening adoption of social media for numerous purposes. One of the most visible is customer service. According to a survey from Microsoft, "65% of customers aged 18-34 years feel social media platforms are an effective channel for customer service." However, age plays a role. Consumers over age 55 report a completely different response to social media platforms. Either through wisdom, experience or skepticism, 75% of them feel social media isn’t viable for customer service. Quite a difference!

But is this more than a digital divide? 

Should we conclude that the older audience's expectations are too high for social media platforms? (Though, since we’ve suffered through a lifetime of poor telephone-based customer service, that's hard to believe!) 

Younger audiences have grown up online and are more comfortable interacting through that medium than speaking to another human. Or is it simpler, as some younger folks might suggest, that the older generation is simply technologically challenged?

The real challenge 

Providing acceptable customer service is becoming more difficult all the time. People of all ages are increasingly comparing every business interaction to the best service they've ever received, no matter the industry. For example, if FedEx can track my package every minute of its journey, why can't my internet service provider give me less than a four-hour window for when their service technician will arrive at my door? We aren't sure if some groups are experiencing higher levels of frustration in their attempts at interacting with chatbots for customer service, or if it's the inability to resolve a complex issue online when our problems don’t match up with the logic employed in the structure of self-service pages. Looking for possible answers, we turn to the remainder of the loyalty statistics Dautovic gathered to see if there were more opinions to help us understand these issues.

Live agents are still essential

You can find a strong support for and appreciation of good customer service across all age groups. Further, consumers agree it just isn't currently being delivered. Consider: 

  • Based on a Forbes report, 86% of customers say an emotional connection with a customer service agent would make them continue to do business with the company. Makes sense to us and we don’t see how customer service delivered via social media could possibly provide that. This research seems to echo our question. Forbes reports that only 30% of customers felt companies made a sufficient emotional connection with them.
  • Further results from Microsoft report that people from around the world still highly regard live-agent support; the leading reason for customer frustration (30%) is not being able to reach the support staff.
  • If you’re considering a high-tech solution for your customer service, consider an Acquia study that reports 69% of U.S. marketers believe technology has actually made it harder for them to offer customers personalized experiences! "There is a growing concern from corporations that the levels of personalized experiences that customers demand is not something they can achieve with current technology."

If the need for great customer service is questioned

While answers to the willingness to accept social media-based customer service between different customer groups may not be answered, Dautovic's summary of research findings certainly provides a powerful case for the need to increasingly focus on improving customer service. Findings include: 

  • Sixty-nine percent of U.S. consumers say customer service is very important when it comes to their loyalty to a brand (Microsoft).
  • Fifty-four percent of consumers say they’ve had at least one bad customer service experience in the last month with bad and annoying experiences with customer service often leading them to switch brands(HubSpot).
  • Satisfied U.S. customers are willing to share their positive experience with 11 different people but ready to tell 15 others about a negative experience (Businesswire.com).
  • Ninety-three percent of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases at companies with excellent customer service (HubSpot).
  • More than 50% of Americans have cancelled a purchase because of bad service and 33% of U.S. consumers consider abandoning a business and switching to a competitor after just one instance of bad user experience (Businesswire.com).
  • Seven out of 10 consumers say they spend more money with a business that delivers great service (Businesswire.com).

No matter how you read Dautovic’s collection of loyalty stats, or your view on future delivery options for customer service, we can likely agree that performance quality and customer satisfaction must not be relegated to a focus on technology or costs. Improved customer service is unlikely to become cheaper, but we can hope that it becomes better and more efficient. As the conduct of so many customer-facing businesses evolves, organizations may find more resources available with which to support enhancements to continued human participation in their service platforms. We’d hate to see the human element in customer service lost.