Is Social a Service, or Just Another Noisemaker?

Social networking takes up an increasing amount of the time consumers spend on the internet, a fact that has many companies beefing up their social media marketing and online customer service efforts.

According to an infographic by help desk solutions provider Zendesk, 62 percent of consumers have turned to the social channel in order to address customer service issues with a brand or business. In May 2011, people spent almost 53.5 million minutes on Facebook and 565,156 minutes on Twitter, according to Zendesk, and more than 34 percent of consumers use Facebook to interact with their preferred brands.

Businesses are tuning into this trend, with 80 percent of responding brands managing their reputations through the websites, 60 percent tapping social for promotions and 58 percent using it for customer service management.

"Social media is more than just hundreds of millions of people swapping information about your business (and what it does right…and what it does wrong)," the company noted. "It is the definitive space for nurturing your customer base, cultivating company culture, and it’s also the fastest-growing space for providing customer support."

Zendesk found that the retail consumers used social the most for support services. Out of responding consumers, 35 percent said they had reached out to telephone companies through the channel, followed by hospitality and travel (34 percent) and cable (33 percent).

But as a recent survey from Conversocial found, facilitating customer service through social carries complications. It can be hard to quickly sort through the general discussions on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms fast enough to find and address problems, and many major corporations have struggled to do so. Missing, ignoring or responding too slowly to complaints made on social networks can negatively impact sales and consumer perception of the company, the researchers concluded.