I saw an interview on CNN over the weekend with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. In this short spot, only a few minutes long, one of Dorsey’s few talking points was how wildly popular Twitter is as a customer service platform.
We all know that Twitter is popular. And not just among the millennial generation—almost 65% of Twitter users are over 35 years old. Last month’s World Cup Final is a prime example of Twitter’s reach—people from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages, generating more than 2,000 tweets-per-second.
The opportunities in social media for customer service are many: drive loyalty, deflect contacts, educate customers, and capture VOC. Those are nice goals, but are they really different from goals of the live channel? Mostly not. But there’s something unique about the spirit with which Twitter accomplishes these goals.
CCC members routinely stress a key principle in communicating with customers over Twitter is openness and honesty. It’s about honestly acknowledging (many times publicly) customer experiences, both good and bad, and demonstrating to them that you’re there to help. The spirit of Twitter communication just seems to be different from the spirit of the phone.
The reason might have to do with the customer’s motivations behind the interaction itself. When customers tweet about a company, they’re expressing their own feelings to the world. When customers make a phone call, they’re usually just trying to get something fixed.
Twitter is also more open as a channel. Interactions begin in public (rather than in an IVR or on the phone), but company outreach is tailored to the individual’s concern. Twitter exists in world of gray, ruled by quick and informal (and very personalized) conversations. While companies also want a more personalized interaction in the live channel, Twitter was born this way – and it’s what users of Twitter expect. Executives need to embrace this open space, even if it means fighting the regimented structure we’re used to.
Here are just a few tips for managing your social media communication:
- Ditch the script—To be effective, responses to customers have to appear genuine. Forget your marketing vocabulary and use the customer’s language.
- Ensure customer privacy—Customer privacy is paramount. Initiate outreach in public, then move it offline to protect customer privacy.
- Respond to actionable mentions only—You can’t respond to every customer in social media. Decide in advance which issues to target and go after them. Keep in mind you don’t have to knock it out of the park every time. Some issues are big and can’t be solved online. You can always acknowledge the customer’s issue and point them in the right direction by offering self-service directions or providing your company’s support line.
CCC Members—Check out more tips on Social Media and Customer Service. Be sure to tour our podcast series on Social Media and Customer Service (featuring Comcast, Best Buy and Bank of America) of the full Webinar replay of Social Media and Customer Service: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Customer Loyalty. Use Tweetview to see who is tweeting about your company (CCC-24/7 Tweetview).
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on August 19, 2010
Respond
Nice post, Jacob! I think that you raise a larger issue, really, when you discuss the fact that Twitter users (Tweeters?) have grown to expect honest and informal interactions in the channel. We often discuss with companies that customer expectations easily migrate from one interaction to the next (in other words, I expect the same level of service from my power company as I do from my credit card company), and I think you can see this play out when you talk about channels too. The expectations that Twitter users have now are likely to carry over to other channels soon (if they haven’t already). So my two cents is that companies not only need to use the non-scripted, informal, and honest approach on Twitter, but they need to start thinking about how to adopt the approach in ALL of their service channels.