One of the greatest ways businesses and professionals can use Twitter is as a customer service tool. More and more companies are starting to monitor their online reputation and respond to customer inquiries posted on Twitter, and the companies that do this successfully can benefit in a number of ways.
While large and well-known companies are the most visible when it comes to interacting with customers on Twitter, customer service can be a focus of every professional, whether you have an established small business or if you’re a freelancer.
The Benefits of Customer Service in Social Media
There are so many positive benefits that can be gained from a successful customer service-oriented presence on Twitter. Here are a few to consider:
Find Out What Your Clients Really Want
One key way to get value out of Twitter in terms of a customer service tool is by listening. If you’re able to track conversations related not only to your specific business, but also among potential clients discussing their needs, you will gain invaluable insight into what your clients really want from you.
This can play a huge role in your marketing and sales efforts because you can tailor your offerings to meet the individual needs you’ve witnessed discussion about on Twitter, and take time to focus on what current clients are saying outside of your own interactions.
Make Your Clients Feel Valued
There is nothing worse to an unhappy customer than feeling like no one cares. When you invest in a product or service, you have certain expectations about what you will receive in return. And when those expectations are not met, you wind up with a bitter taste in your mouth.
There’s already a serious problem if your clients are moving right to Twitter to air their issues instead of approaching you first. But on an everyday basis, you can watch what your clients are saying and learn to anticipate their needs before they even make it known to you. This type of preventative customer service will create loyal and long-term client relationships.
Happy Clients = Referrals
It’s a well-known fact that word of mouth marketing is powerful. And if you have clients who are extraordinarily happy with the service you provide, you will likely see an increase in referrals. If your clients are inclined to sing your praises, Twitter is a great outlet in which to do that. And if they’re used to communicating with you on Twitter already, you’re positioned to benefit. By retweeting and outwardly supporting your clients on Twitter, you will increase the likelihood that they will take reciprocal actions.
How to Provide Excellent Customer Service through Twitter
Use Monitoring Tools
In order to provide customer service on Twitter, you need to know what people are saying about you, about their needs and about the industry in which you work. This can be easily accomplished by routinely checking various resources, including:
Be Responsive…And Quickly
Because Twitter is a public forum, acting fast is necessary, especially in a situation when someone is expressing disgruntlement with your own services. You should acknowledge the issue and offer a resolution as quickly as possible.
Watch for Dissatisfaction
When you’re monitoring Twitter, especially with keywords, take note of tweets that focus on frustration and discontent around the types of services you offer. While the unhappy client may not be a client of yours, watching for complaints can help you identify someone as a potential client. If their reasons for dissatisfaction are areas where you excel, they may welcome and appreciate you reaching out to them.
How do you use Twitter to provide customer service?
For Companies: How To Track Tweets
A Salesforce community manager, Kingsley Joseph, explained how he monitors tweets so quickly - he uses a Yahoo Pipe that tracks Salesforce's online word of mouth. He even coded a generic pipe which people can use to track mentions of their company. Here's the pipe.
Via the Church of the Customer blog, here's how to use the pipe:
In the search field, fill out the terms you want to track. For example, Salesforce Ideas could use: "salesforce+ideas", ideaexchange, ideastorm, dellideastorm, mystarbucksidea. Usually the second field (URL fragment to ignore) should be .yourdomain.com . This is to prevent posts made in the your own blog/community from showing up. The dot before the domain is important. The first time you run the search, Yahoo might return an empty list. To force it to go fetch feeds, click "More Options" and then click "Get as RSS". You can then hit back and re-run the pipe successfully. Titles are de-duplicated and sorting is reverse chronological. Multiple search terms can be used and the matched term will be prefixed to the title of the post.
Salesforce's Yahoo Pipes Tool
Other methods for tweet tracking can involve using a service like Tweet Scan, which performs real-time monitoring of Twitter. Take a look at a Tweet Scan for keyword "Starbucks," for example, and see what we can learn:
- Rom wants to know about the new Pike Place blend
- Winterheart is drinking Italian Roast.
- Stlplace thinks Starbucks should be worried because the McCafe iced latte not too bad and it's cheaper ($2.79 for medium size, no extra for syrup)
- RonHubbard is also digging the new Pike Place blend.
- tdcool is listening to Starbucks' Ambient Luxe album and thinks it's quite relaxing music
And this was just a cursory look.
Starbucks Tweets
But Tweet Scan isn't the only way to search Twitter. Quotably also does Twitter searches where conversations can be followed in a threaded fashion. Matt Dickman rounds up even more services that may be of use.
For more advice, Charlie O'Donnell good job listing ways a company can use Twitter.
And for companies needing even more help, companies like Radian6 are now offering social media analysis and monitoring solutions for PR and advertising professionals.
For Customers: How to Get Support
In addition to the companies mentioned above, several businesses have "community managers" active on Twitter. These reps act as evangelists, customer service reps, and public faces for the company the represent. Blogger Mario Sundar posted a list of the community managers he found on Twitter (which I edited to remove the people whose Twitter username he couldn't find):
- Will Pate: Community Evangelist - ConceptShare (@willpate)
- Mario Sundar: Community Evangelist - Linkedin (@mariosundar)
- Eric Skiff: Community Evangelist - Clipmarks (@ericskiff)
- Marilyn Pratt: Community Evangelist - SAP Labs (@marilynpratt)
- Brett Meyers: Community Evangelist - Zloop (@brettmeyers)
- Ryan Knight: Community Manager - Yahoo (@yank)
- Jennifer Puckett : Community Manager - Disney (?)
- Jim Lynch: Community Manager - Ziff Davis (@jwlynch)
- Jake McKee: Community Guy - Formerly Lego (@jakemckee)
- William Azaroff: Community Engagement - VanCity (@wazaroff)
- Carole McManus: Community Specialist, formerly Yahoo 360 (@puttopal)
- Asa Dotzler: Catastrophist, Mozilla (@asadotzler)
- Anand Iyer: Developer Evangelist - Microsoft (@anandiyer)
- Damon Billian: Director of Customer Evangelism - Mint (@dbillian)
- Domini Perri: Community Manager, Utterz - (@domjp)
- Daniel Ha: Disqus (@danielha)
Dominic Perri, the Community Manager over at Utterz, introduced himself in that post's comments, too. (@domjp)
Let's also add Flock (@Flocker) whose community manager is @evanhamilton, Lookery (@Lookery), and Toluu (@calebelston).
I'm sure this list is woefully incomplete, but, despite the numerous Twitter apps, no unified resource of this information is currently available. We encourage companies with a support rep or community manager on Twitter to respond in the comments on this post with your information so our readers can beginning building their own personal Twitter service directories.
And if you've received customer service via Twitter, please feel free to share your stories here.
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