Top Kenya firms that engage customers on social media

Safaricom, Airtel, Kenya Power and GOtv have topped the list of the firms who use social media platforms to engage their customers, a global study shows.

The results of the first nine months of 2015 indicate that the four companies used social networking sites such as the Facebook and Twitter to respond to queries posted by customers online. This is according to a report by Socialbakers, a Czech-based firm.

Socialbakers is a social marketing and analytics firm that tracks social media accounts of companies across the world to grade corporations based on the volume of queries handled, length of time companies take to answer, tone of responses and fraction of questions ignored.

The world ranking of brands by industry saw Kenya Power emerge top in the industrial category, Safaricom took eighth position in telecom while Equity Bank took position seven in the finance industry.

Safaricom was the only local company appearing in the world ranking of the top 10 “socially devoted” brands on Facebook.  Airtel Kenya came in eighth in the world ranking of the “socially devoted” companies on Twitter.

“Socially devoted means a brand is responding to at least 65 per cent of the questions it receives. On Twitter, a question is any tweet that includes a brand’s Twitter handle and a question mark. On Facebook, it is a wall post on a brand’s page that includes a question mark,” said Socialbakers spokesperson Ryan Hatoum.

“To find the “best” companies in customer care, we rank those socially devoted companies by the total number of responded questions minus total number of ignored questions.”

According to data provided by Socialbakers, more customers engaged firms on Twitter than Facebook.

Airtel’s customer management services were the best on Twitter, with 10,006 questions posted, out of which 97.4 per cent were answered. The response time, at 10 minutes, was also impressive.

On Twitter, 14,538 “respondable” questions were posted on Kenya Power’s timeline, out of which 67.8 per cent were answered. The company had an average response time of 53 minutes.

GOtv customers posted 7,786 questions on Twitter, of which 86.9 per cent were answered.

However, the pay TV service provider’s response time of 579 minutes was the poorest when compared to other companies appearing in the “socially devoted” list.

Safaricom received 9,147 questions on Twitter out of which 67.8 per cent were answered. The company received a total of 6,730 questions on Facebook.

Kenyan companies are increasingly taking to social media platforms, which provide a cheaper and efficient medium of communication, especially for retail-focused companies that have a huge customer base such as banks, telcos and utility firms.

According to the latest statistics by the Communications Authority, the number of Internet users in Kenya grew by a 32.9 per cent to stand at 29.6 million, meaning more than half of the population has access to the Internet.