Customer service on social media: what outsourcing costs

Key takeaways

Social media customer service outsourcing typically costs £9–£18 an hour for managed offshore support or £20–£35 an hour onshore in the UK, compared with £40–£60 an hour for agency community time. It covers order queries, complaints and account questions in DMs and comments. It is different from marketing engagement and needs access to your order or booking system.

• Managed offshore: £9–£18 an hour.
• Onshore UK support: £20–£35 an hour.
• Needs access to orders or bookings to resolve issues.
• Agree response times in writing.

How is customer service different from community management?

Community management is marketing: replying to comments, encouraging conversation and building the brand. Social customer service is support: resolving orders, refunds, bookings and complaints that arrive through social channels. It needs system access, scripts and escalation rules, which is why it is often run by a support team rather than a marketing agency.

• Social media agency pricing in the UK
• Community management costs in the UK

How much does social customer service cost?

Managed offshore support costs about £9–£18 an hour; 10 hours a week is roughly £390–£780 a month. Onshore UK support costs £20–£35 an hour. Agency community time, at £40–£60 an hour, is usually poor value for routine support queries.

• 10 hours a week offshore: about £390–£780 a month.
• 10 hours a week onshore: about £870–£1,520 a month.
• Set-up of scripts and escalation: one-off.
• Out-of-hours cover: priced separately.

• Out-of-hours social media monitoring: what cover costs

What should you agree with a provider?

Agree response times by channel, which queries the team can resolve, when to escalate to you, how refunds are approved, and how customer data is handled under UK GDPR. A written data processing contract is required when a provider handles customer personal data.

When should you keep it in-house?

Keep it in-house if volumes are low, if most queries need a decision only you can make, or if your systems cannot give an outside team safe access. Outsourcing earns its cost once routine queries take hours a week from people who should be doing other work.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a growing online shop's marketing manager spends most afternoons answering where-is-my-order messages. Moving those to a support team with order system access usually frees the manager and speeds up replies.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Social customer service checklist

• Count weekly support messages by type.
• Write answers for the top ten queries.
• Set response times by channel.
• Define escalation and refund approval rules.
• Sign a data processing contract.

• Disabled ad account recovery: what it costs
• Outbound social media engagement: what it costs

Next step

Tally a week of DMs and comments into support and marketing. The support share tells you how many hours to cost.