Twitter for Customer Service & Support?
Comcast, Verizon, Dell and many others are "all in". Why? Mostly because it's a fresh new way to engage customers. However, forward-thinking companies like these are also considering the potential for reducing costs, improving brand image and even expanding their market reach.
Here's how I see companies using Twitter for service & support today:
#1 Proactive support: True story: my PDA was on the fritz. I tweeted about it and happened to include the name of my cell provider, Verizon, in my tweet. Within five minutes--and keeping in mind I didn't contact Verizon directly--Verizon replied to me via Twitter (their support team obviously has alerts set up) and provided me with a couple of good options. After looking up my account, they were able to quickly determine that I was in fact ready for a PDA upgrade and told me where to go to make that happen. They even set me up so that everything was ready for me when I arrived at their store. That's what I call proactive support! I recommend these tools for alerts & conversation monitoring: TweetDeck, Twitter Search, Monitter, and TweetBeep.
#2 Speeding resolution time: Twitter isn't going to take the place of a slick remote support solution or a detailed phone conversation for complex issues, but if managed properly, Twitter can be a lightning-fast tool for putting your customers in touch with the best solutions for their needs. For support, it's one part directional sign and one part engaging conversation. And all of this can be managed with your other support channels with solutions like Salesforce.com's Service Cloud.
#3 Improving brand image: Whether it stems from a good or bad experience, service and support gets talked about (unfortunately, in these types of conversations it's bad service that tips the popularity scale). Companies are using Twitter not only to monitor tone and potential viral backlashes, but they are able to respond in a truly conversational--almost personal--fashion. This has the potential to turn-around even the most volitile of situations. Companies are using Twitter to virally demonstrate good service as well--and this is a great way of getting noticed by would-be customers. Twitter is also proving viral among staff for improving brand image...companies are noticing that their staff are acting as brand ambassadors with their own Twitter accounts.
#4 Reducing support costs: In theory: service and support ala Twitter (provided by both your company and other customers) should equate to lower costs. The premise is that your customers will help solve each others problems, Twitter support should be cheaper than call center support and Twitter--given the inherent 140 character count--forces brevity, and hence reduces the time needed. But that might be a stretch... clearly, more data & case studies are needed!
Are you using Twitter for service? Are you seeing others that are using it (successfully or unsuccessfully)? Is this just a fad? What's the business use case?
Update: new blog post from John Ragsdale titled "The Trouble with Twitter"
Also, if you have a Twitter username, please include it here whether so we can connect.
Follow the SSPA @TweetSSPA.
You can follow me here: @shawnsantos
Sign up for Twitter here: Join
Here's how I see companies using Twitter for service & support today:
#1 Proactive support: True story: my PDA was on the fritz. I tweeted about it and happened to include the name of my cell provider, Verizon, in my tweet. Within five minutes--and keeping in mind I didn't contact Verizon directly--Verizon replied to me via Twitter (their support team obviously has alerts set up) and provided me with a couple of good options. After looking up my account, they were able to quickly determine that I was in fact ready for a PDA upgrade and told me where to go to make that happen. They even set me up so that everything was ready for me when I arrived at their store. That's what I call proactive support! I recommend these tools for alerts & conversation monitoring: TweetDeck, Twitter Search, Monitter, and TweetBeep.
#2 Speeding resolution time: Twitter isn't going to take the place of a slick remote support solution or a detailed phone conversation for complex issues, but if managed properly, Twitter can be a lightning-fast tool for putting your customers in touch with the best solutions for their needs. For support, it's one part directional sign and one part engaging conversation. And all of this can be managed with your other support channels with solutions like Salesforce.com's Service Cloud.
#3 Improving brand image: Whether it stems from a good or bad experience, service and support gets talked about (unfortunately, in these types of conversations it's bad service that tips the popularity scale). Companies are using Twitter not only to monitor tone and potential viral backlashes, but they are able to respond in a truly conversational--almost personal--fashion. This has the potential to turn-around even the most volitile of situations. Companies are using Twitter to virally demonstrate good service as well--and this is a great way of getting noticed by would-be customers. Twitter is also proving viral among staff for improving brand image...companies are noticing that their staff are acting as brand ambassadors with their own Twitter accounts.
#4 Reducing support costs: In theory: service and support ala Twitter (provided by both your company and other customers) should equate to lower costs. The premise is that your customers will help solve each others problems, Twitter support should be cheaper than call center support and Twitter--given the inherent 140 character count--forces brevity, and hence reduces the time needed. But that might be a stretch... clearly, more data & case studies are needed!
Are you using Twitter for service? Are you seeing others that are using it (successfully or unsuccessfully)? Is this just a fad? What's the business use case?
Update: new blog post from John Ragsdale titled "The Trouble with Twitter"
Also, if you have a Twitter username, please include it here whether so we can connect.
Follow the SSPA @TweetSSPA.
You can follow me here: @shawnsantos
Sign up for Twitter here: Join
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Renee Bochman on -
I was just talking to Bill Rose about this, so very timely. I have been considering doing this in lui of Newsletters as a way to drive customers to my support portal for information, let them know about software releases and proactively communicate with my customers.
I would love to hear if anyone is doing this with Enterprise customers and having success (or failure)?
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Permalink Reply by Phil Lora on -
We are considering using Twitter as a way to enhance the communication channel to our customers. We already have a very good communication model using email and our customer-only website, but we realize that many of our customers (the administrators, in particular) are already on Twitter and would welcome the added "touch" from our company. This is a terrific topic and I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts.
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Permalink Reply by Shawn Santos on -
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your comments. No matter how you look at it, there's no denying it's a hot topic these days. There's actually a lively discussion taking place on this subject over on the "Eye on Service" blog (by SSPA's John Ragsdale).
It's called "The Trouble with Twitter". Give it a read and be sure to leave your comments!
Thanks,
Shawn
Phil Lora said:We are considering using Twitter as a way to enhance the communication channel to our customers. We already have a very good communication model using email and our customer-only website, but we realize that many of our customers (the administrators, in particular) are already on Twitter and would welcome the added "touch" from our company. This is a terrific topic and I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Warticki on
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Here's why people "don't get" social networking....they are stuck in their own boxes and perceptions of the way things ought to work, not to mention they realize their own communication is congested conjecture. We are all creatures of habit and afraid to admit it. Everyone wants to be a change agent, but not an instrument of change itself. YOU change, but not ME.
Traditional support models won't facilitate solutions like Twitter. And for those companies who want to remain Traditional, they can raise up their antenna, stay with analog tv and play their walkman cassette player.
I've been using Twitter for my job at Oracle Support as another way to reach our customers. You remember customers, the ones that pay our bills?. It's a great way to meet customers, partners and colleagues. My 'tweets' even get picked up and re-Tweeted by others. It's a valuable resource. I've got a small but growing following and I've received a lot of positive feedback on my posts.
Support staff should post their own proactive hints, tips, tricks and solutions. They should be 'listening' to tweets by customers and responding just like the previous customer example.
Meet your customers where they are. Heck, just meet your customers and stop hiding behind a ticket number, phone number and web portal.
The best support is no support!
~CW @cwarticki
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Permalink Reply by Shawn Santos on
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Thank you for your feedback Chris. There doesn't seem to be a lot of moderates when it comes to Twitter. It's either Love It or Hate It!
Chris Warticki said:Here's why people "don't get" social networking....they are stuck in their own boxes and perceptions of the way things ought to work, not to mention they realize their own communication is congested conjecture. We are all creatures of habit and afraid to admit it. Everyone wants to be a change agent, but not an instrument of change itself. YOU change, but not ME.
Traditional support models won't facilitate solutions like Twitter. And for those companies who want to remain Traditional, they can raise up their antenna, stay with analog tv and play their walkman cassette player.
I've been using Twitter for my job at Oracle Support as another way to reach our customers. You remember customers, the ones that pay our bills?. It's a great way to meet customers, partners and colleagues. My 'tweets' even get picked up and re-Tweeted by others. It's a valuable resource. I've got a small but growing following and I've received a lot of positive feedback on my posts.
Support staff should post their own proactive hints, tips, tricks and solutions. They should be 'listening' to tweets by customers and responding just like the previous customer example.
Meet your customers where they are. Heck, just meet your customers and stop hiding behind a ticket number, phone number and web portal.
The best support is no support!
~CW @cwarticki
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Permalink Reply by Keith Redfield on
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Hate it...
http://venturebeat.com/2009/11/23/twitters-stalled-growth-could-spe...
Anyone remember "desktop push"? We don't even accept email cases due to the poor signal fidelity (context, entitlement, etc) - 140chars? C'mon... I think Twitter remains a small "noise-level" channel for support in B2B and somewhat more successful in B2C.
We might use it for outbound communications (again; supplemental channel) for things like scheduled site outages. For brand monitoring and management? Sure, and we're quite active there.
As one of my staff points out, Twitter makes 2 things easy that used to be hard:
1) RSS feeds - it is one, and so makes for a very simple API to creating them
2) Email distribution lists - aka majordomo like functionality.
It's also "fun" in the sense that it feeds an emotional response - I think that's part of the love/hate dichotomy.
(now, all that said, we did get one of our routers to tweet recently...)
Shawn Santos said:Thank you for your feedback Chris. There doesn't seem to be a lot of moderates when it comes to Twitter. It's either Love It or Hate It!
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Permalink Reply by Shawn Santos on
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Hi Keith,
Thanks for your thoughts, and for pointing out this article on the Twitter slow-down.
I suspect that after the Twitter fad cools (it can be argued that today Twitter is a fad more than anything else), people and businesses will find more relevant applications for the service. From my perspective, the trouble with Twitter isn't the technology (that is, the 140-character count or the dreaded "white whale"), the trouble is with the people and processes.
1) People aren't getting relevant information because they're following too many accounts, not enough accounts or the wrong accounts. The folks who stay on-board through this modest downturn will be able to get more value from a discerning following strategy.
2) Many people don't understand how it works, and therefore the businesses they work for aren't maximizing Twitter's potential. Like with any fad, this too shall pass--people will begin to understand the nuances of Twitter and how they can be applied to business (even the support business).
3) On a related note, the actual level of interaction on Twitter, well, sucks. Sometimes it seems as if nobody is listening. This is due to many factors including one's following strategy, use of monitoring apps, understanding of Twitter jargon, and the simple fact that most people prefer to lurk rather than engage.
The slowdown was expected, and I think it's a good thing. First, for the people and processes--as the fad dies, more useful and relevant applications will emerge, and second, for the technology--maybe this will give Twitter some time to get it's server capacity up to speed with all the excitement it has generated!
Thanks again for your comments.
Shawn
Keith Redfield said:Hate it...
http://venturebeat.com/2009/11/23/twitters-stalled-growth-could-spe...
Anyone remember "desktop push"? We don't even accept email cases due to the poor signal fidelity (context, entitlement, etc) - 140chars? C'mon... I think Twitter remains a small "noise-level" channel for support in B2B and somewhat more successful in B2C.
We might use it for outbound communications (again; supplemental channel) for things like scheduled site outages. For brand monitoring and management? Sure, and we're quite active there.
As one of my staff points out, Twitter makes 2 things easy that used to be hard:
1) RSS feeds - it is one, and so makes for a very simple API to creating them
2) Email distribution lists - aka majordomo like functionality.
It's also "fun" in the sense that it feeds an emotional response - I think that's part of the love/hate dichotomy.
(now, all that said, we did get one of our routers to tweet recently...)
Shawn Santos said:Thank you for your feedback Chris. There doesn't seem to be a lot of moderates when it comes to Twitter. It's either Love It or Hate It!
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