Study Reveals Companies Have Schizophrenic Approach to Social Media

Despite the Growing Presence of Social Media for Customer Conversations, Few Organizations Mine the Social Media Channel to Improve Customer Satisfaction

The link above is to a press release about a new study released by MarketTools, Inc., who interviewed 331 executives at companies with annual revenue greater than $10 million. Completed surveys showed the following results:

• 49% of companies have a presence on Facebook, but only 1/4 of companies provide customer service via Facebook
• 24% have Twitter presence, but only 12% provide service on Twitter
• 95% of respondents said customer satisfaction is very to extremely important but only 1/3 have formal Voice of the Customer programs in place to collect and analyze customer feedback
• The companies that do have Voice of the Customer programs, only 1/2 of them get regular feedback
• 33% said social media as a channel is rising in their organization, but only 68% overall have active presence in social media
• only 1/4 said that their CEO regularly participates in social media on behalf of the company

What does this signify? What do you think is causing such a disconnect between well-understood best practices and actual behavior?