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2. Customer Service
through Twitter

3. You could be offering school and office
furniture like lunchroom tables or
selling electronics such as audio-visual
equipment. No matter what the
product may be, customer service is
naturally an essential part of any type
of business.

4. Your relationship with the customer
doesn’t end at the purchase, not if you
want to continue building your brand
and sustain your business.
Communication tools play an
important role here, and one
particular social media platform called
Twitter can enhance this aspect of
your operations.

5. Twitter Advantages
This online social networking service
is categorized as micro-blogging. Just
like blogs, it’s a channel for anyone
to express their opinions and share
information except that you’re
limited to short text messages.

6. As an online marketing
channel, companies use it to post
their profiles and reach out to their
target audience. Those very same
features provide advantages that can
enable businesses to cultivate
relationships with their customers
and manage a positive experience of
their brand.

7. • Quick response – Customer service is
essentially about solving problems and
a critical factor here is how quickly you
can respond. Phone and email are the
traditional channels of communication
used for customer support. These
channels can be slow, however, when
compared to how fast your messages
can get to your customers via Twitter.

8. • Immediate results – Your customers
can just as quickly reply. This capacity
for immediate feedback is not only
helpful in problem resolution, but can
also boost your support team’s morale
and performance. They can
immediately see how their assistance
made an impact on customers.

9. • Lower costs – Twitter is not just
free, but also easy to learn and deploy.
This makes it significantly more cost-
effective than maintaining a call
center’s services or training and
equipping a traditional in-house
customer service department.

10. A Few Twitter Pointers
While Twitter was never designed
for the purpose of customer
service, its features easily lend
itself to such an undertaking. Here
are a few tips on how to use the
platform to implement customer
support.

11. 1. Establish your presence on
Twitter
You have to first make it known
you’re using this particular social
media tool for problem resolution.
Place a prominent button on your
company’s website and post your
announcements with an
encouragement to follow you on
Twitter.

12. 2. Learn the features
Know when to send public @replies
messages and when to use direct
messages. DM’s allow you to send
more detailed explanations and can
reduce clutter on your company’s
Twitter stream.

13. 3. Personalize your approach
You can put the names of the support
staff on the business account, use a
combined photo of your face and your
company’s logo as an avatar, and end
your messages with your actual first
name. All this brings the Twitter
conversation closer to a personal
interaction and helps build trust.

14. As you consistently provide great
customer support on Twitter, the social
media itself serves as a platform that can
spread stories of your excellent services.
It creates a positive feedback loop that
improves brand experience and
generates new leads.