Proactively engaging your customers yields many benefits. For example, research conducted by CFI Group finds that customers who post their contact center experiences on social media sites and then receive follow up from the company rate their overall customer satisfaction almost 20% higher and are 15% more likely to recommend the company compared to those who receive no follow-up.

Many companies are taking note. According to Dimension Data’s 2014 report on contact centers, social media is the third fastest growing customer access channel in terms of planned implementation over the next 24 months, behind only web chat and smartphone apps.

Conversely, companies that have yet to appreciate the importance of social media in today’s customer service environment face considerable brand risk. On average, customers tell 21 friends about a bad customer service experience (according to the American Express 2014 Global Customer Service Barometer). When considering that the average adult has 338 friends on Facebook (Pew Research), a single negative post about your company can have an outsized effect.

Note: More recent research by CFI Group can be found here.  A more recent Dimension Data report can be found here.