Are companies just playing at customer engagement on Social Networks?

Not many contemporary customer centric companies fail to have those icon’s on the website linking you to their Twitter, Facebook, My Space and Linked In presence.. Indeed in an hour of random surfing I couldn’t find one. Digging a little deeper though revealed an interesting variation in approach.

Virgin Airways recently presented at an on line retail trade event and showcased a marvellous exhibition of customer communication via Twitter. Thousands of souls huddled together in airports, and the surrounding environs, during the Pre- Christmas freeze of 2010. Virgin kept their customers up to date via Twitter, virally reaching more stranded passengers than staff on the ground could ever reach. This alleviated a lot of pressure on the contact centre, where the phone would have been the primary source of inbound enquiry from stranded passengers.

In general the UK’s top retailers are failing to respond, Social media adoption in the top 25 retailers is high (around 75%) but responsiveness to questions posed was poor averaging just 10%.

Would they fail to respond to phone calls? Would they ignore E mails? I doubt it.

It would seem in the rush to have that little social networking logo on the website some are running the risk of alienating customers by not having a total engagement strategy with consistency across all channels.