Example of great Customer Care from Frank Eliason from ComCastCares 

Twitter offers many benefits to businesses. But one that is rarely talked about or discussed is that of its role in Customer support or service. As customers we want our issues resolved quickly, be told about problems promptly, and to actually feel that we are being listened to. 

Twitter allows the business to do all this with the resultant benefit that their brand or business may actually gain a reputation as having an excellent customer service department. So how can Twitter help? 

Solving People’s Problems – When people have problems, they want them to be resolved quickly. Often people are left holding onto the telephone line for ages whilst we are told that ‘all our agents are busy right now’, or the website has crashed, again making the issue worse for the customer.. 

AT&T uses Twitter during service outage – It seems that Twitter was one of the main ways that phone company AT&T has been communicating with customers and updating the public about the fibre cut that caused thousands of people in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area to go without broadband, phone, and wireless service for most of Thursday.

Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse, whose company has been affected by the outage, said the only way she has stayed on top of the situation has been through Twitter. 

“All of my real time updates have been coming from the AT&T Twitter feed,” she said. 

Indeed, she isn’t alone. Nearly 2,400 people have been keeping tabs on the situation via AT&T’s Twitter feed. Full Article Here 

Twitter allows the business to respond incredibly quickly. Depending on the situation, a single message to the person many resolve the problem. Within seconds the person with the issue, will know that you are on the case, know that there is an issue, and are doing your best to sort it out. Surely that is what great customer support is all about. 

Over time, if your business / organisation keeps providing excellent support in this fashion, word will spread that you are doing a great job, and that your support is second to none.. That in itself may well bring you new clients / customers. 

So what is the next step? – When considering adding customer support via Twitter, I would suggest that it is critical that the people who are dealing with people’s requests are properly trained on the uses of Twitter. They will also need to make sure that they respond quickly to any messages they see that have the keywords that you are tracking.

 When responding to issues, use the @reply if appropriate. In that way, others will see that you are trying to help. You should obviously go to the direct message, if the problem has escalated, and may need a telephone number or private email address to resolve it. 

Be genuine and transparent with who is dealing with the issue. This should be communicated on the Bio of the Twitter profile.

Tracking your Keywords.- If you are offering customer support, then you must follow what is being ’said’ about your brand / business. There are loads of websites that can help with this, they include – Twazzup, Twitter Search, and Tweetbeep 

Make sure that you inform your clients / customers that you are on Twitter. You can do this by adding buttons and banners to your blogs / website etc..

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