Out
of all the social networks where people rant and rave their opinions, why
should your business still care about Twitter?
Even
as newer, “hotter” networks gain steam, Twitter remains a great platform both
for customers who need to reach out in real time and for businesses looking to
learn more about their customers.
Why Use Twitter for Customer Service?
For
any business with customer experience at the top of their priorities list, it’s
still a necessity. Some of the factors that come into play:
·
Twitter is built for immediacy. While platforms like Messenger might offer more sophisticated
automation tools and might have more users with push notifications enabled,
Twitter’s culture is all about fast posting and of-the-moment conversation.
It’s also much more real-time than other networks like Facebook, where the
newsfeeds are more powerfully influenced by algorithms.
·
Tweets have longer shelf lives. Content posted on Twitter is indexed by
Google, and running advanced search queries for sentiment analysispurposes is relatively easy.
·
Velocity loosens lips. People don’t seem to “filter themselves” as much here, so you’re
likely to get a better glimpse of your customers’ true thoughts and desires
than on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.
That’s
the beauty of social media
customer service – you can talk to customers easily and in real
time, building better relationships with them as individuals and boosting your
online reputation while still making the most of the asset that is their
feedback.
What’s
more, having an active support presence on Twitter pays off. A 2015 study by Twitter, in partnership with Applied Marketing
Science, found that airline customers who received prompt support responses via
Twitter were more likely to recommend the airline to others and even to spend
more on subsequent purchases with the airline.
To
make the most of this all, you just need to know where to find the insights on
Twitter, and how to use them in a customer
feedback loop that will improve the experience for all
customers and improve your products and systems.
Let’s
take a look at some especially potent and efficient ways to find and use
customer feedback published 140 characters at a time.
1. Systemize Support Queries to Help Faster
Twitter
can be a gold mine for discovering customer problems, points of confusion and
other important experiences you can learn from. Not only can you jump in and
solve the problem, but you can also use it to understand your audience’s
experiences with your business and make strategic improvements.
For
example, Fitbit combined customer listening with a custom system to incorporate
customer feedback into product and services, as Director of Community Allison
Leahy explained on the Focus on
Customer Service podcast.
Here,
social posts get automatically tagged based on keywords and type of input.
Customers are also pointed to a Features Suggestions board on the brand’s official community portal,
which is reviewed regularly by their product teams.
These
systems make it easier to help customers and actually use their opinions.
You
can also use listening tools to create templates or automations for answering
customer questions based on frequent queries.
For
example, you can incorporate canned responses for interactions such as seeking
out more feedback via direct message or asking for a shipping tracking number.
2. Automate Repetitive Support Tasks
In
addition to saving time on certain steps of the support process, other steps,
particularly very repetitive or tedious tasks like answering frequently asked
questions, can be fully automated.
Going
back to the Evernote example, this company’s support team also commonly moves
conversations to direct message, where they use Twitter’s welcome messages and quick reply automation to get to the
root of the problem.
Since 42 percent of consumers contacting brands on social
expect a response within 60 minutes, automation can save time crucial to
customer happiness and retention.
3. Analyze Interactions More Deeply
There
are many benefits to automating parts of your support beyond the immediate time
saved on that task.
In
the longer term, it organizes feedback for your product teams and other
departments to analyze and incorporate. Twitter’s DM quick replies can
even collect a net promoter score (NPS) rating and integrate with
Zapier to either continue the support conversation or send the
data to another tool, for analysis over time or for triggering message drips
aimed at increasing customer delight.
You
can also collect and analyze any conversation, whether or not you’re using
Twitter’s official support features.
Advanced
social listening tools like SentiOne can
even turn these signals into useful automated dashboards and reports that make
it easy to track brand reputation and social footprint over time.
4. Combine Your Feedback Channels
Another
way Twitter can improve your customer feedback loop is by streamlining some of
your different customer feedback channels. Between multiple social channels,
website chat, call centers and email, helpful feedback can come from a number
of places, and it can be hard to keep track of it all holistically.
Diversifying
the number of channels in which you are available to receive customer feedback
helps develop a sense that you’re customer-focused. And merging it all via a
centralized service hub can make the overall process easier to manage.
Twitter
even offers its own easy tool to
embed a button on your website with a call-to-action to direct message you.
Instead
of linking to a support contact form on every page of your site, or using a
separate live chat, this pushes customers into an automated social support
system like those described above.
Last
year, Microsoft found that according to 39 percent of customers, the best way to deliver a satisfying
service experience is to make sure people never have to repeat themselves to
multiple representatives. By allowing customers to contact you from multiple
places, while merging it all into the same customer support funnel, it’s easier
for you to keep the conversation organized, nonrepetitive and personalized.
5. Track Your Audience
So
far we’ve mainly talked about direct messaging, but a lot of customer feedback
and support happens “out in the open,” through mentions. Since these types of
tweets may not all warrant responses, therefore being irrelevant to your
multi-channel support system, it’s helpful to have a separate way to track and
analyze mentions.
For
example, you can use Publicate’s Twitter search-driven RSS feed creator to
subscribe to mentions of your handle, product names or industry keywords – or
even your own support account’s conversations.
You
can then view these in your RSS reader to review feedback and use Zapier to
forward anything insightful, important, or requiring a reply to your larger
feedback loop.
6. Proactively Initiate Conversations
Finally,
we’ve yet to address going out and soliciting feedback from your audience and
customers. But don’t just wait for people to come to you with feedback.
Instead,
try to start conversations and use Twitter as a public forum or chat to
initiate conversations with customers. This could be as simple as a Twitter pollto
learn more about your customers’ preferences. They’re quick and simple yet can
be surprisingly insightful.
You
can solicit feedback via mention tweets, DMs, or even custom audience ads.
Twitter
Ads are most commonly used for customer acquisition, but they’re also great
for reaching your existing customer base.
In
this example, Workfrom just learned a key insight about their audience of
remote workers. Knowing the workspace preferences of their community can help
them tailor features for their remote work spot search.
To
get more in-depth insights, you could hold a Twitter chat or roundtable to
bring customers together and ask about their opinions and experiences. For easy
management of Twitter chats, the free TweetChat app automatically appends chat-specific
hashtags, organizes multiple chats into handy “rooms” and allows community
moderators to bookmark specific comments for later follow-up.
And
in addition to starting conversations with your customers, you can monitor
brand keywords for people talking about you but not “to” you and reach out
where there’s an opportunity to help and learn more about improving that
customer experience.
Bring Customers in the Loop
Customers
often air their unfiltered opinions and experiences out in the open. It’s
advantageous to every part of your business to make the most of this
opportunity, learn what people want from all areas of your company, and apply
it.
It’s
no longer enough to tweet back and be clever. You need to strategically apply
those conversations to business improvements. Integrate Twitter into your
larger customer feedback loop.
Courtesy & OA : searchenginejournal
