Shoppers Put Big Demands on Social Media

CONSUMERS looking for an instant response to their inquiries and complaints are turning to social media sites in their droves.

Gerd Schenkel, executive director of Telstra Digital, says the number of round-the-clock staff waiting to deal with customer inquiries has grown six-fold in the past 12 months.

"The live chat is growing very strongly because our digital channels as a whole are growing," he says.

"The growth rate for live chat is up about 600 per cent from last year to this year and this month we expect to offer about 140,000 chat sessions with our customers."

Time-poor Australians are among those who use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to have their queries answered at a quicker rate, rather than phone or send an email.

Schenkel says Telstra now has several hundred employees working in their chat team to deal with real-time online customer inquiries.

"Live chat is often more convenient for customers because they are already on the website or they're already on a mobile," he says.

"They've seen a bill or a product and they have a question about it, so we find it easier for many customers to just click a button and have a quick chat session as opposed to making a phone call."

Self-employed massage therapist Belinda McLeod, 39, recently used social media to interact with her telecommunications company after having some problems with her broadband connection.

"I get frustrated when I contact call centres and am put on hold for half an hour," she says. "I couldn't find instant messaging and the customer service wasn't open on Sunday, but there were people online.

"I thought by raising issues publicly (on Twitter) they would do something about it."

She says the telco responded to her query on Twitter several hours later.

Matt Travers is the founder of new comparison website ServiceRage, which analyses customer feedback, and says the growing presence of social media is forcing companies to deal with customers in the public domain.

"Anyone can see an exchange happening between the company and the individual if they are using Twitter or Facebook," he says. "The balance of power is in the consumer's favour. Now more than ever it's important for companies to deliver good service."