Twitter is by far the most up-and-coming customer service channel for brands who want to provide near real-time support, as well as show the Twitterverse that they are a customer-centric brand.
However, like other customer service channels, it is important to monitor performance in terms of response time and satisfaction rate. WaveMetrix has looked at some of the best practices from brands that are successfully providing support on Twitter, to help other brands understand where to start and how to go about it.
The first step is to make sure you have a brand-centric Twitter account (handle) and a separate dedicated support account, rather than combining customer service with brand-centric discussions on one handle. For example, Delta Air Lines has a @Delta handle where they post competitive information, fun facts and news about the company. Alongside this, their @deltaassist handle deals with customer complaints and queries.
Similarly, T-Mobile has a brand-centric
@TMobile handle to share news of sponsorships, contests or new products, whilst
@TMobilehelp deals with complaints.
Having a dedicated Twitter support handle
helps channel negativity away from your main brand space, where you should be
focusing on building positive brand engagement.
The second step is to make sure you are responding to complaints in a timely manner and to compare your performance with the rest of your industry. Consumers expect a fast response on social channels as they would with a call center. Every unanswered complaint represents negative buzz about your brand until you address it.
Analysis of average response time on dedicated support handles shows that they enable faster responses compared with brands that don’t separate the two:
- 74% of complaints on dedicated support handles get a response within four hours, versus only 51% of complaints on single brand handles
Finally, you should measure what proportion of positive consumer tweets your support handle is getting to see whether customers are giving positive feedback about your service. There are strategies which can help increase the amount of positive feedback you get. For example, Delta, HP and Bank of America used naming reps, which gets them a higher proportion of positive feedback than competitors as the relationships feel more personal:
These are just a few steps to building customer relations through Twitter. Read more details about WaveMetrix’s customer service best practices by downloading the PDF paper here. Or contact Leonie Bulman at leonie.bulman@wavemetrix.com
This study was conducted using the traditional WaveMetrix methodology, combining technology to measure response time and reach, with 100% human coding to analyse sentiment and topic.
