Customer Service on Twitter

Now that I have finally finished my exams, I can get back to blogging and catching up on my RSS feeds etc. One of the things that I have been looking at on Twitter is corporate organisations responding to customer queries, complaints and comments via their own branded channel.

Just like they should keep an eye on what is being said about them in the blogosphere, it is equally important to go that extra mile and help their customers on Twitter. I think it shows proactive engagement on their part.

Some banking examples include:

• RBC - http://twitter.com/RBC
• Citi - http://twitter.com/Citicorp
• Bank of America - http://twitter.com/BofA_help

For the organisations, this a low cost initiative, but has a potentially high positive effect on the customer who is looking for information. The answers to many of the queries are often simple links to existing FAQ and help material on their existing websites.

Approach seems to differ from organisation to organisation. Some have a single channel, while others allow separation of context by having a separate twitter stream per business unit (i.e. One for Credit Cards, another for Online Banking etc). It will be interesting to see if this type of web 2.0 customer service becomes mainstream, as you would almost expect the big players listed above to be leaders in this domain.

The main point here is that organisations must be aware of what is happening on the web in relation to customers making comment and publishing queries which are there to be answered. What better way to serve them than directly embracing the social media and making a difference to each one.

Knowledge Manager - PayPal Dublin

I've been really busy lately, finishing my 2nd masters, but I had to make time to blog this. I was excited to see that PayPal are advertising for a Knowledge Manager here in Dublin.

This seems like a great opportunity, and great to see knowledge management jobs popping up in the middle of the recession!

For more details see the exclusive linkedIn add.

Idea - Internet Banking App for the iPhone

I was kindly given an Apple iPod Touch for my birthday last week, and I have to say that the apps framework and app store have got my creative juices flowing. I have been playing around with a number of the downloadable apps and have now got my calendar, contacts, email, facebook and linkedin access through my iPod touch.

So, next I was thinking what other apps would I like? I started thinking about the tasks I carry out over the web (apart from searching tons of research papers) that I could potentially like to do through the iPod touch. My main thoughts were about my accounts access for banking, mobile phone, credit cards and other utilities.

The most popular of these I would think is internet banking. Yes I can already do this by using the inbuilt safari browser to go to the internet banking site and transact in that way. The problem is that the site is not designed for browsing it in such a way, and I repeatedly need to zoom in and out to manage the transaction which is not very suitable. So, my suggestion is that banks should produce an app for the iPhone to allow their customers to access their internet banking directly from the iPhone/iPod touch home screen.

There would be a number of benefits to this:

• It would work well as a marketing tool to advertise the internet banking offering.
• It provides a new channel to create business (mobile banking already exists but most mobile access is too slow to make the experience enjoyable. The wifi ability of the iPhone/iPod touch allows fast access).
• Surely all mobile phone operators will follow the same app model to increase the attractiveness of their phones (like this Nokia rumour?).
• It could possibly be extended to provide other services in the future.
  
• The net generation would love it, it would be "cool" to them.

What would the app be like? Well it would be quite simple I imagine.... Click on the app, which would present a login page allowing you to enter you identification code and password. This would then present you account information etc. Obviously there would be some security concerns related to this, but I can't see this as being less secure than the already available web browser option.

I think that more and more companies will enter this domain, as the popularity of the iPhone increases.