The #Brandchat that highlighted the importance of brands being responsive.
How much more do you like brands that tweet you back compared to those who don’t? On this week’s #BrandChat, that was one of the questions that came to mind as I answered question after question trying to tackle the importance of responsiveness for brands in this modern era of communications.
The truth is, being responsive to your consumers and your different audience is becoming the new normal. The conversation between consumers and brands is no longer a one way street beginning from the brand. Rather, the conversation has become a two way flow of messages and reactions where people actually interact, speak to, and out about brands they have relationships with. Think about it. Every time you turn around their is another brand going viral for engaging with their social community. Wendy’s. Taco Bell. Oreo. The list goes on.
“What are their best practices?,” is what Brand Chat wanted to know, but good business has, and always will be, consumer centric. Consumers have always wanted to be listened to, engaged with, and catered to. Thus, what created great experiences between consumers and brands in the past has only been extended by social media. The conversation has only moved to a faster platform but best practices have remained the same, because a question has always deserved an answer, a complaint has always deserved a resolution and etc.
What is more important is authenticity in a brand’s response. It needs to feel like there is a person on the other side of the line actually invested in the conversation. Some brands have invested in using bots to be their response team, and if speed were the goal that wouldn’t be such a bad investment. However, it’s not worth the money if the interaction someone has in the conversation is automated. Consumers, people, feel it immediately and what you tried to make up for with fast response times will be lost in the lack of an actual genuine response.
It is important for brands to understand that responsiveness doesn’t just mean getting answer to people within a certain time frame. It means being real and tangible: taking time to craft answers, comments, and general engagement to individual consumers and audience members. Responsiveness is just another word for the ability to create and manage lasting relationships. At the heart of brand advocacy is the consumer’s relationship with a brand. Responsiveness is an important aspect of developing that relationship.
