Kenyan telecom Safaricom has been ranked as the world’s second and fourth most devoted brand on Twitter and Facebook respectively, the only African firm in the top 10 of both rankings.
Social media statistics site SocialBakers found Safaricom had average response times of 58 minutes and 75 minutes on the two sites respectively, representing a 75.48 percent response rate on Twitter, where it has over 93,000 followers, and 72.29 percent response rate on Facebook, where it has close to 250,000 likes.
Other African companies in the global top 20 included Egypt’s Mobinil and Tanzania’s Tigo.
The statistics, entitled “Socially Devoted”, analysed brands that incorporate social networks into their marketing strategies to act as an alternative to busy call centres by receiving queries from their customers.
According to the findings, brands are now responding faster than ever to queries they receive online, with the average response industry rate standing at 55 percent as at December 2012, compared to a 30 percent response rate in June of the same year.
The industry benchmark allows for a response time of 13.7 hours, though SocialBakers says the most realistic response time to queries should be 10-30 minutes depending on the nature of the company’s service.
The world’s three most devoted brands on Facebook are Personal Argentina, Claro and KLM in that order.
