Businesses are falling behind on consumer expectations when it comes to social media. This isn’t anything new, but there is a new study out about it.

The Northridge Group is sharing survey results finding that social media is basically being used a last resort with twenty-six percent of consumers turning to these channels when they can’t reach a rep through another channel. That’s the highest of all reasons they turn to social, it finds.

Do you find social media to be a difficult channel for customer service? What would make it better? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Forty-seven percent of people plan to use social media next year the same or more than they currently do when it comes to customer service. In other words, businesses need to get better at this.

The Northridge Group survey found that an equal number of consumers (22 percent) use social media to share positive and negative experiences about brands. That may come as a surprise to some businesses who suspect customers are more vocal about negative encounters.

Here’s a look from the report at how businesses are meeting expectations for customer support:

For social media, businesses are only doing slightly better than they are with letters.

When it comes to how may times a customers has to engage with a company before getting an issue resolved, businesses aren’t doing great with social media compared to other channels:

Businesses are really struggling to resolve issues via social channels:

And response times aren’t particularly good either:

There’s plenty more where that came from if you want to download the report.

On a related note, we recently looked at a study from Lithium Technologies, which found that business leaders are struggling to meet the rising expectations of customers on social media.

Facebook is reportedly testing a new customer service feature that could greatly help businesses to improve their statistics in the areas discussed in this article. It would enable businesses to serve a canned response to users who send them messages, which could significantly improve response times at the very least, but also help the path toward resolution as well.

The feature is called Saved Replies, but it’s unclear when Facebook might roll this out on a wide scale, if it even does.

Do you think Facebook’s feature will make it easier to live up to customer expectations? What other tools should the social networks offer? Discuss.

Images via Northridge Group, Lithium Technologies