New Age for Customer Service

Customer service used to be a private transaction between a business concern and people interested, or those who use a product and/or service. Not anymore! Twitter has created a public stage and businesses are forced to respond and manage their customers’ frustrations in the full glare of the public.

Before now, consumer complaints, issues and frustrations were managed by directing them to emails, customer care lines and support tickets that were either abandoned or overwhelmed with complaints and therefore created more frustrations than solve customer-related problems. With the advent of Twitter and given the real-time nature and users’ craving for immediacy, more and more people are turning to it as their number one channel for expressing their opinions.

A study conducted by American Express in 2012 shows that social media savvy consumers are more valuable customers and wield the greatest amount of influence.   According to the study, customers tell significantly more people about their service experiences, and say they’d spend 21% more with companies who deliver great service – compared to 13% on average. Twitter has become the platform on which they share their thoughts with their personal networks and that has a huge effect on both the perception of others and their purchasing decisions.

Twitter definitely has become important platform where people and brands connect and it is not just about marketing and advertising of product or business – customer service takes place too. In an article for the Observers (2012), Lisa Bachelor noted that Twitter has become so widely used for airing grievances that companies open twitter accounts specifically to deal with customer feedback, separate from their general public-facing accounts.

Information people can gather about an organization or business outside its control is gradually becoming its customer’s reality. Whether they believe it or not people are talking about their business online and those who read it are taking it as fact. Any business that approaches online and Twitter marketing like the traditional advertising channel where communication is one-way is missing a huge opportunity.

Traditional customer support channels tilted the balance of power to the company not the customer. Customers can call, chat, email, send text messages; if the company wanted to avoid them, it was simple. In fact, the contents of the conversation, the concerns of the buyer and the implications of the poor product or service quality were quietly hidden from public glare. Twitter is changing that by creating a public platform of engagement. It has become a dream come true for consumers. Once they see those traditional channels are not working, they turn to twitter.  

   Expressing their opinions about business on twitter is now common place. This touch point is different. It was owned by consumers; they can tell the whole world about their frustrations especially when emails, 1-800number, and other existing channels are not delivering on brand promise.

Today’s consumers have become more complex; difficult to reach and a lot more informed and sophisticated. Twitter has given them the tools and resources to research about any product, look for people who have used the products, seek reviews etc. It has also allowed people to build communities and can rally round each other to organize attacks against brands they don’t like or are dissatisfied with their goods or services. On the other hand, they also have opportunities to garner recommendations, likes and followers for the business. It is then easier to garner positive reviews and favorable perception about the product.

Businesses spend a lot of money in developing communication channels to make it easy for customers to reach them. According to Jon Swartz of USA Today, Twitter has democratized customer service by collapsing all barriers between a brand and its customers and has thrown up tremendous opportunities for deepening the brand experience.

As Twitter continues to power the change in media consumption and communication habits of people and organizations, several organizations created their business profiles to tap into the social communities by marketing their products and services to them. But the social customers have continued to see these social connections of businesses as an opportunity to engage the business on product and services related issues, hence the birth of the use of twitter in customer service.

Some statistics show that today customers are purchasing from businesses that are more likely to answer questions than to those who won’t answer their questions on Twitter.