This survey is based on 3.1 million private messages and 1.5 million public wall posts, gathered from 256 companies.
This is the average number of messages per month that companies deal with. Public posts on Facebook are in a long slow decline, and there has been a rise in private messaging between customers and brands. Private messages are now five times the volume of wall posts. Direct messages are a giant, private iceberg, hidden under the Facebook wall.
For example, this chart shows all the messages airline KLM handled in Q1 2016. That's 5,000 wall posts and 35,000 private messages — seven times more! This kind of proportion - where private messages far outweigh the public ones - is typical.
Some customer communications get better responses than others. Wall posts have an 86% response rate from companies but private messages have a 96% response rate.
On a public wall, an average conversation lasts about 3 posts. But in private messaging, the average conversation lasts 5 posts — and that average is going up. The longest conversation we found was 425 messages, and conversations that go up to 200 are relatively common.
On average, companies take 600 minutes to respond to a private message. That's 10 hours! But response time is getting quicker, A year ago it took companies 750 minutes. Response time to public wall posts is about half that — 300 or 400 minutes. That suggests Wall posts are less complicated than private messages ... and also companies don't like leaving public posts hanging out there with no answer. Clearly, bots could reduce the initial response time.
This chart shows how long it takes a company to respond to a private message depending on whether they have a closed wall or an open wall. Guess what? Companies that don't let members onto their Facebook pages are worse at responding to messages than those that do.
We surveyed of 50 companies to find out which channels they use to respond. Basically, everyone is using Facebook and Twitter. About a fifth to a quarter of companies are not using private messages, which is interesting. And 20% of you are using Google+!
Most companies either have dedicated customer care teams or dedicated social media teams handling these messages. A smaller portion have digital marketing teams on the job. But the most interesting result here is for PR - almost no companies handle customers in social media with their PR people. In the early days, social media was almost entirely handled by PR and comms people. Not anymore!
Does any of this make money? 56% of companies say social customer care has a positive return on investment. 58% say it saves them costs. There are still large minorities who regard social customer care as a cost centre that doesn't really drive sales.
The take-away: Most social media communications are now private, enclosed inside one-on-one direct-message conversations. That suggests the market opportunity for AI bots is equivalent to a majority of the current market for social media customer care.
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