ZDNet reports on a new survey of senior executives where those surveyed are clear that social media is crucial to customer care from a listening and monitoring perspective, but they’re not so clear on who is responsible for engaging with those customers via social channels.

ZDNet summarizes the key metrics:

• 52 percent of senior executives say social media is part of their customer service operations.
• 57 percent of execs see social media as a way to garner customer input and insight on products and complaints.
• 73 percent of execs don’t know how many employees are dedicated to listening to social media conversations about them.
• 64 percent of execs farm out social media monitoring to marketing.
• 41 percent of companies monitor online conversations and only respond to direct customer questions.
• 36 percent of execs measure the value of a social media program.

Are you surprised by any of this information? For instance, the revelation that 20% of those surveyed say their companies listen to what customers say online but never respond to them? What about this one – 73% percent of execs don’t know how many employees are dedicated to listening to social media conversations about their business?

Such views aren’t good enough. If they’re typical in organizations,  we need to do something about it. I plan to do just that in the Social Media for CEOs briefing that I’m co-hosting with Luke Brynley-Jones in London on September 20. We’ll include the points raised in this survey as a focus for discussion and debate to enable senior executives to better understand what social media can do for them.

If you have C-Suite executives displaying similar thinking, send them along!

• The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive for Capgemini who interviewed 302 senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies. ZDNet’s post was published on July 25.