In today’s generation, we are a lot busier, so waiting around is not ideal. We don’t expect to wait so we will order with next day delivery or access live chat software on a company’s website. When people have an inquiry about a product they have bought, they want an answer immediately.

Which method of communication is better, phone call or social media?

CALLCARE investigated the issue by looking at different mobile phone networks and comparing their response times by phone and social media. 

Throughout their investigation, they discovered that the best form of communication is by telephone. As the average response time by phone is 3.6 minutes. EE had the shortest waiting time with 47 seconds and Vodafone had the longest with 19 mins 52 seconds.

The twitter response time was much longer than the phone response time, with the average wait being 89 minutes. Virgin Media wins the trophy for the shortest time with 4 minutes and the longest response time was from the mobile network 3 with 465 minutes.

So how can mobile networks speed up their social media response times? They can do this by following these few simple steps shown below on how to improve communication through social media.

Categorise and prioritise emails

One of the best ways to speed up customer service emails is by prioritising them and putting them into categories. When an email is received it should go through a triage system that puts them into different levels of priority. Once the emails have been categorised and prioritised your team can effectively respond to each subject based on priority, which will then save efficient time. 

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Use templates and text shortcuts 

Customers may all be asking a similar question. So instead of your team repeatedly producing tailor-made responses for repetitive questions, you can give them an email template to make the job easier. This will speed up response time and keep communication consistent so all customers will receive the same answer to their question. 

Autoresponders 

Customers want to know that their message has been received and that help will be with them shortly. In the autoresponders there should be a few things outlined for example the average response time, thanking them for their message and opening hours of the customer service department.

Have customer’s information within reach

To help a customer quickly you must have their information available to you. This way you can get to the issue immediately instead of having to wait to receive the answers from them. Information that should be kept is their email address and current order/past orders. 

It is important to reduce customer service response times to keep customers happy and to improve your company’s reputation. To improve your customer service techniques then you should follow these 4 steps which are:

  1. Categorise and prioritise emails.
  2. The use of email templates.
  3. Autoresponders for direct messages.
  4. Have customer information within reach.