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Twitter & Customer Service Survey

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Scroll down the page for survey download links

Summary

It’s now well publicised that the rapid growth Twitter experienced during 2008 and the first months of 2009 slowed dramatically towards the end of 2009, although ending the year with 75 million user accounts. Twitter activity, on the other hand, grew from 5,000 tweets per day in 2007 to 300,000 by 2008 and 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009. Figures released by Twitter in February 2010 registered 50 million tweets per day (or an average of 600 tweets per second). No such figures are available for the Middle East & North Africa, but activity on Twitter has visibly increased over the past year and overall user numbers have also grown. Spot On estimates that there are currently 35,000-40,000 registered Twitter users in the region compared with a mere 3,000 users in March 2009.

Corporate activity in the MENA Twittersphere has grown too, with an estimated 400 brands represented on Twitter in the region including companies, government departments, NGOs and non-profit organizations (more than 300 can be tracked via Spot On’s Middle East Brands Twitter List). Spot On Public Relations conducted the first major MENA Twitter habits and demographics survey in August 2009. In light of the growing commercial interest in Twitter and social media in the MENA region, Spot On carried out a customer service and Twitter survey in February 2010. About 1,000 active Twitter users across the region were invited to take part in the survey and 174 users completed the survey in its entirety.

Key Findings

— 95% of respondents welcomed brand engagement via Twitter

— 87% of those surveyed said that Twitter had affected their perception of a brand or company (up from 61% in our August 2009 survey)

— 50% of those surveyed had received customer service via Twitter

— 50% of the survey had purchased a product or service as a result of Twitter

— 65% of respondents were interested in receiving special offers & coupons from brands on Twitter

— 82% admitted a preference for brands that they knew via Twitter that affected their purchasing

— 88% of those surveyed said that they would recommend a brand based on their experience on Twitter

All respondents were also asked to give one piece of advice to brands using Twitter. 101 Twitter users out of 174 contributed advice from their experience on Twitter. We highly recommend any brand that is using Twitter or considering using Twitter to read their advice in the survey report.

You can follow Spot On PR on Twitter via @spotonpr

Survey Downloads

The report: 101 things brands should know about Twitter (PDF)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (English, Word doc)

Twitter and customer service survey press release (Arabic, Word doc)

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101 things brands should know about Twitter by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Want to read more?

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Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Online marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, social media | 1 Comment »

#DubaiToday twalk radio

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

#DubaiToday 'trending' on UAETweets.com (3/Mar/10)

Perhaps it was the rainy weather, perhaps it was the fact that four well known local Twitter users appeared live on the show, or perhaps it was just the conversations, but Dubai Eye 103.8FM’s Dubai Today show really got the UAE’s Twitter community buzzing on Tuesday.

On hearing about local social media folk heroes Wild Peeta’s presentation at the Corporate Communications Conference on Monday, Dubai Today presenter Jessica Swann (a.k.a. @JessicaSwann on Twitter) was keen to have the speakers on the show. Tiring of more traditional conference presentations, Wild Peeta had turned to their fans and, somewhat bravely, had asked four of their social media followers to talk about Wild Peeta’s social media campaign and business on its behalf: on 24 hours notice, unvetted and unrehearsed. So, Spot On’s Alexander McNabb (a.k.a. @AlexanderMcnabb), Mohamed Younes Parham Al Awadhi (@wildpeeta), Paul Castle (@DaddyBird) and Uzma Atcha (@Lhjunkie) were cordially invited to appear on Dubai Today (as was @yahya101 who sadly couldn’t make it to the studio at short notice).

Spot On PR notified its social media followers in advance, as it usually does about Alexander’s public appearances, as did Wild Peeta, together with Twitter reminders just before the show. However, the reaction to Tuesday’s show took us all a bit by surprise! Whilst not strictly accurate, as one tweep put it, everyone on Twitter was listening to Dubai Today!

#DubaiToday tweets per hour (2/Mar/10)

Encouraged to use the Dubai Today Twitter hashtag #DubaiToday, within a couple of hours listeners had not only made the tag ‘trend’ locally (as tracked by UAETweets.com), but had made #DubaiToday trend globally (appear on Twitter list of top tags in use). By mid-show (Dubai Today runs between 9am and 12 noon) #DubaiToday tweets were peaking at more than 200 tweets per hour and over the course of four hours, more than 500 tweets were exchanged continuing discussions on Dubai Today, including contributions to the show that were read live on air. By the end of the day, 118 Twitter users had taken part in conversations with and about the Dubai Today show by using the #DubaiToday tag and had tweeted some 700 times between 8am and 8pm Tuesday.

No cash prizes, no crisis, no scoop

It’s worth noting that the reaction on Twitter was in response to a fairly intellectual discussion about the merits of social media marketing. There was no competition for expensive air tickets or cash prizes, nor any significant breaking news. This was simply mid-morning talk radio where the conversation seemed to strike a chord with the online community.

During the same time-frame Spot On saw between 250 and 350 click-throughs on its links inviting social media users to listen live to Dubai Eye (sorry, this is as accurate as we can be with this statistic), which it had posted across a range of social networking sites on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, including Twitter.

Clicks per hour on Spot On's short URL to Dubai Eye website (3/Mar/10)

Meanwhile many elements of online conversations surrounding the Dubai Today show did not use the Dubai Today show hashtag at all, and so the number of tweets inspired by and about Dubai Today discussion topics on Tuesday was far in excess of 700, perhaps double.

In terms of engagement, this is really quite impressive. For sure, the Dubai Today show has never been able to engage 118 telephone callers on a single show, and yet 118 people had their say (obviously in addition to those that sent emails, SMS messages or called-in to the show). Many brands are delighted to generate a few comments on their product or service per day. Dubai Today got hundreds of comments on Tuesday, more than 80% of them during a four hour period over the show. It’s also worth noting that we’re not talking about views, visits to online content or passive radio listeners: this was 118 people that were engaged and responded in some way to the radio shows content.

And how many people did Dubai Today reach on Tuesday via Twitter? We will never know exactly. However, what we can tell you is that the 118 Twitter users who tweeted using the #DubaiToday hashtag had combined aggregate following of 71,500 Twitter users. Also that the likelihood is that as many as 200 were involved in related conversations, if we were to count those that didn’t specifically use the #DubaiToday hashtag. And that many (if not most) of the Twitter users involved probably had offline conversations of some kind about Dubai Today. That’s a lot of conversations.

The power of twalk radio!