In today’s digital age, it’s become almost imperative that companies maintain social media accounts on all platforms, from Facebook to YouTube. But, in order to get the most out of these avenues of customer support, they need to participate in the social networking aspect, most effectively doing so by providing customer support.

Using custom database software can help these companies with social media campaigns as a means to organize projects and posts as well as maintain analytics, which can be important for participation considering that many consumers expect companies to be organized and efficient with how they use social media.

In fact, according to a survey by American Express, 42 percent of social media users are more likely to inform other consumers if they have a good experience with a business whereas 53 percent will warn their fellow consumers about a bad experience with a company. Although social media users are most likely to admonish rather than praise, they are also willing to spend more for great service.

Many consumers will use Twitter and other social media as a means of communicating with customers on problems they may be experiencing with their products. According to an experiment by STELLAService – a consumer resource service – that was conducted on 25 major companies, more than 50 percent of the consumer related questions they asked on Twitter were left unanswered.

In fact, there were only two companies where consumers were guaranteed to get an answer from and they were L.L. Bean and Zappos. The latter of which would respond to every single question in under an hour.

If companies wish to excel in this type of customer service as well, they may want to invest in a custom database software where they can maintain and easily access social media metrics and analytics as well as useful customer information for marketing and PR managers to utilize when answering customer questions.