Which UK Broadband ISP and Mobile Operator Gives Top Twitter Support

An interesting new study from social media analyst WaveMetrix has taken a look at the United Kingdom’s biggest broadband ISPs to discover which gives the best support via Twitter. The study found that good support is about more than being the fastest to reply. Just ask Virgin Media, which wasn’t the fastest like Sky Broadband but still did well.

WaveMetrix conducted its analysis of Twitter activity over one week from July 31st – August 7th 2013 and during this period it found that Sky Broadband (@SkyHelpTeam) responded (tweeted) faster to its customers than Virgin Media (@virginmedia).

But Sky’s focus on replying within 1 hour (it tackled 59% of consumer complaints within this time) meant that some of their customers were overlooked and thus 37% were left to wait for 6 hours or more for a response. By comparison Virgin Media were slower but they did reply to 3,457 customers (76% of the week’s activity) in less than six hours.

Sadly BT’s dedicated @BTCare handle was the worst performer of the large brands covered, with the lowest percentage of replies under an hour and 72% of replies taking longer than six hours.

On the other hand both BT and TalkTalk (@TalkTalkCare) did ensure that almost all of the tweets to their Twitter support feeds were dealt with within 48 hours and thus fewer slipped through the cracks.

Many people may still disparage social media sites like Twitter but this can often be misguided and neglects the fact that they’re useful for more than chatting about nonsense with your friends. Enhancing your options for customer support is just one of those benefits and it can be unwise to ignore it, especially when you might be able to get a faster and cheaper fix than by using a slow email or putting in an expensive phone call.

Take note that WaveMetrix only used a fairly small sample size for its study and only looked at the largest providers. But then a lot of smaller ISPs don’t even seem to bother with Twitter, which is a shame.