Buffer Takes On Brand Monitoring

Buffer has long been a top option for posting, analyzing and optimizing social media content and now it's taking its offerings to the next level with the announcement it has acquired Respondly, which will help to launch a standalone customer service and brand monitoring tool (rebranded as Respond).

Exhaustive research has been published about the lack of customer service support on social media sites. While customers expect to be able to reach brand representatives there - regardless of day or time - the companies themselves are responding slowly, if at all.

Buffer's Repond, set to launch in January, will provide a simple way for companies to reach out to customers, reply to their questions and monitor what's being said (see image) on Twitter (and only Twitter for now).

While brands can request early access to Repond here, it'll be interesting to learn how much a Twitter-only service can compete with the likes of Sprout Social and Hootsuite, which offer a similar service across networks. One difference, however, could be that a customer service team can manage Repond on its own, whereas Sprout Social is typically used to assign customer service tasks out of the platform (although multiple users can have access). Respond might be most well suited for a @BrandHelp type account - giving brands a standalone customer service tool for a standalone customer care handle.