Saturday 23 May 2009

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:

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.