Is your business responsive enough on Facebook?

25 Jun Is your business responsive enough on Facebook?

If you are executing a successful social media marketing strategy at your auto dealership, then you definitely understand the importance of reputation management. Engaging with customers who would rather communicate via a tweet, private Facebook message, or Yelp post is an increasingly important aspect of the customer service experience. As you’ve probably discovered, responding to these customers in a timely fashion is a very effective tactic toward clearing up miscommunication or discovering that your business clearly did something wrong. Your reaction time could mean the difference between losing a valuable customer and strengthening their loyalty to your dealership. That’s something that Facebook is counting on, with their recent change to label businesses based on their level of responsiveness.

Recently, Facebook began drawing attention to this added feature, by prominently displaying results for Page administrators.

How quickly does your brand respond?

While it is certainly in your best interest to react quickly to social messages from consumers, each auto dealership needs to determine how much effort to put toward responding in less than 5 minutes to all replies. Below is the information from Facebook, taken directly from their Help section.

How does my Page get the very responsive to messages icon?

To get Very responsive to messages below your Page’s cover photo, your Page must have done both of the following over the last 7 days:

• Responded to 90% of messages
• Maintained a median response time of 5 minutes for all replies sent

When your Page has the icon, anyone can see that your Page is very responsive to messages.  When your Page isn’t yet very responsive to messages, only people who help manage your Page can see responsiveness info below the Page’s cover photo.

Note: Only Pages that have allowed people to contact the Page will have responsiveness info.

Facebook is clearly intent on continuous innovation, but a move like this is centered on one specific goal. Gamifying the response time for brand Pages is all a part of their big-picture strategy intended to draw additional attention to the platform. If Facebook can continually prove to brands how important and relevant their platform is, brands will have no choice but to stick with it and eventually spend more on sponsored posts.  If we could offer one bit of advice, it would be this.  Don’t rush your responses, especially in an effort to simply beat the 5 minute timeline that Facebook has set as the standard.  You’re having a one-on-one conversation with someone, so make it count!