How to Use Twitter as an Effective Customer Service Platform

Customers are to be treated with utmost respect. While you work to improve the quality of your product, it is equally important for you to cater to the grievances and queries of your customers. You can’t expect them stand in long queues or hold the line for an hour just to share their distress regarding your product. The customer service medium has to be hassle free so as keep your customers satisfied.

As you are using the social media platform to promote your products and market your brand, you could even use it as a medium for your after sales service.  Studies show that about 30% of consumers, who are also social media users, prefer customer service over the online medium instead of having to visit the store physically or even having to call them on their help-lines.

With the number of Twitter users growing each day, it may prove to be an effective platform due to its easy-to-use features and instant associability. Twitter can prove to be very helpful when it comes to valuable information regarding tastes, likes and dislikes and opinions on the various products under the same category. Twitter promotes faster responses and at the same time involves a lower cost as compared to running a call centre. Following are some tips you could use for your business as well:

• It is important to have a separate set of professionals who handle the company’s twitter account and handle the online crowd who reach out for help. The Twitter team has to remain proactive and very quick.
• In order to avoid too many tweets, you could share the FAQs and Help Page of your website.
• You’ve been given 140 words, make sure you are to the point and provide all the sufficient information in a single tweet itself.
• In order to avoid creating a negative brand image, you have to be very respectful and leave them on a hopeful note. Sort issues without being rude.
• You could launch online campaigns or promote your event via Twitter using hashtags.
• You may want to monitor mentions using tools like Mentionapp, TweetDeck, Mention or Storify amongst the many others. These apps manage feeds, track mentions, suggest connections, etc.
• You could use festivals and holidays, or some global or national events to your advantage by releasing interesting advertisements related to the events.

Twitter can be an excellent platform to build a reliable medium of customer-company interface.