Why Aren't Companies Responding to Questions on Facebook?
A new survey of 20 top online retailers on Facebook that suggests their level of responsiveness to customers is uneven, at best. Conducted by STELLAService, a company that rates customer service among online businesses, found that one out of four companies failed to respond to a customer-service question posted on their Facebook wall, and even fewer replied to questions asked as comments on their posts. Appalling in a world where connectivity and social media has become second nature to so many consumers.
While 25 percent of retailers didn’t respond to wall posts, that number rocketed to 65 percent for comments on other posts. Eight companies deleted the questions that were posted on their walls, whether they answered the question or not. Of those that did respond to these posts, the average time was one hour (not bad). However, these numbers are shocking. Isn't this what companies want from social media: engagements, comments and questions? Why wouldn't a company respond? So many small businesses will kill for that kind of action, and these top online retailers are just ignoring it and throwing their social media success away.
And to delete the questions from the wall? I could understand doing that if they are profane or irrelevant, but besides that, deleting questions of fans and customers only indicates that you don't care. Especially since deleting them means that the company saw the post and still chose to ignore it. I don't see any benefit to deleting questions, whether they've been answered or not. Even if the company has no intention of answering them, leaving them up could at least give other fans a chance to answer the question. Deleting questions that have been answered also poses problems, as it means that a company could get a question asked multiple times, when leaving it up could be just as helpful for future visitors.
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