With social media platforms continually expanding, the conversation is shifting from traditional customer care channels to Twitter and Facebook. But are brands coping with the high volume of inquiries and questions? And which platform are brands more likely to respond on?

According to our latest results, the Airline industry is the most Socially Devoted industry on Facebook and Twitter. But on which platform are they most active?

Note: To evaluate social customer service, we look at two criteria: the brand´s Response Rate and the difference between the questions it has answered and the ones it has ignored.

Royal Dutch Airlines KLM had the highest volume of questions on Facebook and Twitter during the last quarter and still managed to become one of the most Socially Devoted airlines. Nevertheless, KLM responds better on Facebook (97.39%), where it has a larger fan base and faces more customer inquiries compared to a response rate of 72.23% on Twitter. It´s also the only airline from our sample that responds to questions faster on Facebook than on Twitter.

American Airlines is more responsive on Twitter. It has a similar Response Rate on both platforms (around 76%) but the airline received about six times more questions on Twitter than on Facebook, making it the lead responding airline on Twitter, out of the six airlines sampled.

Check out more results in the table below! As you can see, airlines perform better where they receive a higher volume of questions.

KLM has provided a shining example of great response times over both platforms. Now that you know this is achievable, will your brand take up the challenge and decrease your response times?

The Differences between Customer Service on Facebook and Twitter

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Twitter’s platform is based on instantaneous communication. By using ampersats and hashtags, a fans message can quickly reach a wide range of users that subscribe to these topics, making it a faster communication channel than Facebook. Twitter posts must also be straight to the point, since they are limited to 140 characters. That can work both as an advantage and a disadvantage when you are facing crisis situations, such as flight delays, service unavailability, or products failing to function. For example, fans will appreciate updates about the resolution to the problems, and the hashtags allow for instant notification. On the other hand, Twitter must be monitored regularly, since customer complaints may circulate across the network easily. Proactive customer service is key to success.

Facebook is also a great customer service platform but it´s community driven. It allows users to discuss alarming issues and encourages them to assist each other to resolve them in a way that company intervention is not always needed. However, Facebook questions often languish on the Page in full view, so brands should take this into account when considering response times. They should also respond to as many questions as possible to ensure that correct information is provided to their audience.

Learn more about Socially Devoted, the industry benchmark for social media customer care, here. Click the link to find rankings of the most responsive brands across different industries on Facebook and Twitter!