Customers are becoming more demanding than ever. In the era of social media, with things running at a crazy pace, it is not surprising that your social media presence must be constant. What is even more important, is to be able to handle the messages by your customers, as fast as possible.

I attended on behalf of Posse yesterday the first day of Social Media Success Summit (#SMSS13) and after three very interesting presentations from SM experts, I decided to bring into the surface the topic of social media responsiveness. Most businesses are nowadays on social media, but how responsive are they really when it comes to their customers?

Customers don’t need anymore to send a letter or a mail of complaint when they are not satisfied from your services. All they have to do is post about it on their social networks, or your page. And if you ignore it or reply belatedly, a negative vicious circle is just in front of your business.

Jay Baer mentioned yesterday a survey that stated that 42% of Americans who complain about a company expect a response within 60 minutes. There are no open hours when it comes to social media, especially for a demanding customer.

As Mari Smith mentioned, the average response rate for a Facebook page is 14 hours, while the client expects it to be 30 minutes.

This is another case of how differently two people might think of time and the importance to keep a stable response rate when it comes to interaction with your customers.

That’s why you start thinking on your responsiveness. It doesn’t mean that you have to be alert on your PC 24/7, but there are several tools and services to help you maintain your brand’s reputation. You can even have a fully customized action plan made by us, tailored just for you monitoring and managing your reputation.

When it comes to your brand’s reputation, keep in mind what Kim Garst said yesterday.

The most important question you should ask on social media is “How can I help you?”

The answer to expect depends on you!