73 percent of people say they would use social customer support (infographic)

As businesses use social media to promote and protect their brands, digital help desk Zendesk is seeing customer service move to the social world as well.

The automated customer service representative annoys all of us. We have all navigated numerical menu options (press one for ‘I want to bash your product against the wall’) that make us wait for a solution until we yell, “Can’t I just speak to a human?” We’ve also dealt with customer service over e-mail, watching threads of miscommunication go on for days. Built up frustration and unsolved problems often lead a user to complain on social media – the same digital place that companies are trying to promote themselves.

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According to an infographic created by Zendesk, Facebook is the top social network for people looking to interact with a specific brand. People spent 53,457,258 minutes on Facebook last May. That’s over 890,000 hours of pure social media. Facebook’s main goal is to get people to share their interactions and content across the Web. Thus, it provides tools to help people be brand promoters without even knowing it. For example, the company recently launched “actions,” which allows Facebook users to do more than just “like” something, but rather “want,” “bought,” or “ate” that item. This creates a more engagement-friendly way to say, “I want the latest Big Bang Theory DVD set more than I want proof of String Theory!”

Big name brands are using Facebook to promote through its applications interface as well. For example, Ticketmaster created an Facebook application to allow friends to share where they are seated at an event, and suggest future events that user would like.

People generally “become a fan” of a brand on Facebook to get discounts, be the first to receive news about the brand, and more. So, why wouldn’t they also air their grievances to the brand in the same place? Around 73 percent of people say that if they were supplied the right tools, they would be happy to interact with customer service on the social level. Currently, the majority of customer support requests have been in the retail sector, with telecommunications following in second place.

Check out the infographic to find out more about customer service going social.

Customer service image via Shutterstock, Infographic via Zendesk