Listen to the tweeple – but only speak when spoken to

New research from Maritz and its social intelligence arm Evolve24 suggests people are happy for companies to respond to them about complaints they have made on Twitter.

Maritz polled 1,300 angry customers in September, a third of whom had received a response from the subject of their complaint and, of those, 83% liked hearing back.

Of those whose anguish went unheard, 86% said they would have liked a response. But there are limits to this interaction. Almost two-thirds of respondents said they would not like it if a company contacted them about something other than their complaint.

Does this suggest Twitter users implicitly accept that companies will be engaging in social media monitoring? Or do they make a distinction between ongoing keyword monitoring – which tracks any and all brand mentions – and the more direct ‘@’ mentions, where it is clear that a user is addressing a company?

The Maritz research isn’t explicit on that point, but I’d be interested to hear your views as part of the continuing discussion of social media privacy and ethics.