Summary

As consumer expectations for real-time responses rise, many organisations rush to post more or hire. The bottleneck is slow approvals and an unclear voice. Set clear brand guardrails and grant “five‑minute authority”, and trust builds—because speed with standards earns confidence and conversion.

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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The New Service Clock

Customers now experience brands as live services, not static campaigns. The window to respond has compressed from hours to minutes, and often to seconds. The risk isn’t only a missed reply; it’s a signal that your organisation is slower than your market. Expectations reset with every frictionless interaction people have elsewhere, and they bring that standard to you.

There’s hard evidence behind the shift. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer notes that 64% of people expect real-time replies from brands on social channels, moving service into the public square where patience is thin and consequences scale.

Speed With Standards

Moving faster without standards simply accelerates inconsistency. The unlock is pairing artificial intelligence (AI) velocity with precise brand guardrails: clear rules that define what your brand will say, how it will say it, and when it will escalate. Think of it as setting the lane lines so speed remains safe, repeatable, and on-message.

Practical guardrails often look like:

• Decision rights for who answers what, within defined risk thresholds.
• An “answerability” matrix by topic: resolve, clarify, redirect, or escalate.
• Tone and empathy cues that adapt by scenario, channel, and customer state.
• Data hygiene: a single source of truth for facts, offers, and status.

Operating For Minutes, Not Days

Real-time expectations expose operating-model cracks: layered approvals, siloed tools, and unclear voice. Treat them as design problems. Set service-level targets for social and chat, then engineer for them—small cross-functional pods, templated responses that invite nuance, and escalation paths that don’t slow everything else.

Most organisations we work with find that three leadership moves change the pace without raising risk:

• Define “five-minute authority” so frontline teams can resolve known scenarios immediately.
• Instrument the journey: time-to-first-response, resolution in-channel, and recontact rates.
• Close the loop across sales, product, and service so repeated issues trigger fixes, not just replies.

Designing The Human Loop

AI can draft, route, and summarise at machine speed; humans still carry accountability, judgement, and care. The art is in the handoff. Train teams on when to let AI handle the routine, when to enrich with context, and when to step in with human judgement. This multiplies productivity while protecting trust.

Done well, the cumulative effect is material: faster decisions, fewer handoffs, and interactions that compound into loyalty and referrals. The brands that win will treat response time as a strategic asset—codifying behaviour today so they can set, not chase, the next standard.

Sources:

Further Resources

1. Navigating Consumer Expectations on Societal Brand Impact
2. Harnessing Consumer Intent: From Responsibility to Demand
3. How Emotional Connection Shapes Consumer Choices

Brand clarity often begins with the right questions — we’d be glad to explore them with your team. Start the conversation.

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