Facebook page admins: step away from the kettle and get back to your keyboards. The new ‘response rate’ function is here, implemented to gauge page admin response times and form part of the social media site’s strategy to cater for merchants and business owners.  This latest addition has been designed to enhance customer support features, which form an essential part of Facebook’s long-term aim to improve and develop its sales functions.

This recent change is one in a list of many and doesn’t come as much of a surprise – Facebook is already capitalising on the customer-service function of social media as part of its strategy to cater for over 30 million small businesses using the site for commercial purposes. The social media giant is therefore much more than a place for friends to chat, with paid advertising now a significant component of ‘Facebook for Business’ and the ongoing implementation of other business-friendly functions including its ‘saved replies’ function in June of this year.

Brand presence on social media is perceived as the norm, but customer expectations are rising. In the same way that buying groceries in-store at 2am on a Tuesday in a 24-hour Tesco (yes, there are people who do this) is taken for granted, customers now want a similar service from their local taxi firm or mobile repair shop: a fast response outside of conventional working hours.  Facebook is well-aware of this shift, and the site has not hesitated to capitalise on its in-depth knowledge of its user preferences, hence the introduction of its ‘response rate’ feature.

Fast response times from a business will earn them an icon below their cover photo that is also visible to the public – a gold star for good customer service, if you will. Slower response times, however, earn no recognition.  This feature has the capacity to serve both customer and business alike. The former can now more easily differentiate between an actively engaged business and one that may take weeks to respond to a query, potentially rewarding the more communicative brand with more custom. Businesses benefit similarly – quantifying customer service credentials is another way for a brand to stand out in a very crowded cyberspace.

So, what’s the catch?  Facebook stipulates that to earn the green icon you must “respond to 90% of messages with an average response time of five minutes”.  Findings from an online survey by The Social Habit supports this change, with over 40% of customers who contact a brand, product, or company through a social media site expecting a response within one hour.  Nearly 60% of respondents in this survey said that they expect the same response time during the evenings and weekends.  Is this realistic?  Businesses hoping to achieve this target simply may not have the capacity to achieve Facebook’s target , which requires the staff, resources, and funds to deliver twenty four hour account monitoring.

There is clearly a disparity between customer expectation, the demands of social media, and the ability of page admins to deliver customer service highlighted by this change.  How soon this may be reconciled is up for debate, but in the mean time keep an eye on your Facebook messages.

By Georgina Hawkins