SOCIAL
Twitter Highlights Its Customer Service Compatibility in a Creative Blog Post
Whether you’ve done it on purpose or not, chances are your brand’s social media accounts have gotten a question or complaint from a customer before. Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms, where customers expect a response from a brand in less than 24 hours and their team just put out a funny reminder to use brand accounts accordingly.
In 2016, as many as 42% of telecommunication tweets were customer service related, with 27% of them asking to extend, sign or alter their contracts with the telecom brands. Nearly half the customer service teams reported a 51% increase in the volume of requests coming in as the pandemic forced everyone into their homes and seek out ways to problem solve anything without leaving the house. In February, 19% retail banks had created special customer service accounts to provide timely help for their customers.
Joe Rice, the Lead Product Solutions Sales Manager put a humorous spin on reminding people why Twitter is an excellent place to interact with customers:
The oldest documented customer complaint wasn’t in response to a request for feedback but rather an unsolicited salvo against a perceived injustice. Dating from around 1750 BC in Mesopotamia, the small clay tablet describes how a man named Nanni was delivered the wrong grade of copper ore from a merchant named Ea-nasir. And Nanni wasn’t happy, writing in a now extinct East Semitic language, “What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” We unfortunately don’t know how or if Nanni’s complaint was ever addressed, but this ancient artifact does highlight that as a species we’ve been complaining for a very long time.
Joe Rice
Lead Product Solutions Sales Manager, Twitter
Rice then quotes Forrester research, which found that 70% of organizations rely on surveys only for getting customer feedback, with a large number of them solely relying on email surveys, which rarely get opened. Twitter, on the other hand, is a place of instant communication that is more relaxed and free-form than a polished survey. In 2019, Joe Rice wrote about the value of the “unprompted real time emotions” people share about brands they are using and experiences they are having.
Today, personal interaction between brands and followers is crucial and expected. Using social media to answer questions, praise and concern alike can only strengthen a brand image. Ignoring the incoming messages or deleting them altogether can lead to frustration and loss of customers who don’t feel valued and find the next alternative.
Read the full blog by Joe Rice here and follow him on Twitter.