Many businesses don't even publish customer service phone numbers. So how can you get a company's attention?
That's what Nicole Van Zanten decided to find out.
She's a consumer, mom and co-president of ICUC, an agency that works with brands like Target, Macy's, and Mastercard.
ICUC analyzed nearly three million real brand-to-consumer interactions between January and June of this year and found what it described as a clear formula for getting a fast response.
It involves a specific social media platform and method.
Van Zanten said the approach has worked in her own experience.
"I most recently got a response within 15 minutes and they made it right within the day," she said.
ICUC's analysis compared different ways consumers contact businesses on social media, including publicly tagging a brand, mentioning it in a public post or sending a direct message.
According to the findings, direct messaging was the most effective method.
"They are one-to-one, they're private, they land directly in the inbox of a person or a team monitoring that inbox, and it can't really get lost," Van Zanten said.
Public posts that tag or mention a brand can become buried in social media feeds and tend to generate the slowest responses, according to ICUC.
The agency said customers who tag or mention a brand can expect to wait about 24 hours for a response, while the median response time for direct messages was two hours and 43 minutes.
The analysis also examined which social media platforms produce the fastest responses from companies.
"X was really built for real-time conversations and brands are staffing it that way, so we have dedicated teams watching it live throughout the day," Van Zanten said.
ICUC found that X had the fastest median response time at three hours and 30 minutes.
TikTok and YouTube were the slowest platforms, with median response times of more than 13 hours.
According to the ICUC analysis, finance and insurance companies were the fastest responders overall, with a median response time of one hour and 44 minutes.