» How to Use Twitter for Customer Service

Best Buy & Twitter

As Twitter grows everyday, more and more businesses are starting to understand the customer service implications of such an active and open community where everything is discussed and very little is off limits.

As a business you will find that your brand just might be part of that conversation. If it’s not, it should be.

Comcast, Dell, Best Buy and several other large corporations have stepped up and made sure that they are active in the conversation about their brand by creating active customer service response teams on Twitter.

Dell has attributed millions of dollars in sales to their Twitter efforts.

So how can you have a successful customer service on Twitter?

• Listen to Your Customers: There are several ways to monitor Twitter: TweetScan, Twitter Search and TweetBeep are just a few. Use them to find out what is being said about your brand.
• Respond: If the talk is bad, then reply and ask what you can do to help. If the response is good, say thank you. Businesses often respond only when they want to correct a problem but a personal reply to a happy customer goes much further.
• Be Active: Just because you’re customer service doesn’t mean you can’t lead the conversation. Pose questions to your followers or to the community. Being on Twitter gives you the opportunity to correct problems as they arise but you can also stop them before they happen by finding out how your product or service is performing. You can conduct impromptu research to get into the minds of your customers.
• Bulk Up All Customer Support: It’s important to never forget that everyone isn’t on Twitter. So while you’re building your Twitter support, don’t forget that the traditional customer service still needs some work also.

If you’re still unsure then check out Best Buy and ComcastCares on Twitter. See how they’re doing it.

What has been your customer service experience on Twitter? Good or bad, we’d love to know.

Tags: Best Buy, ComcastCares, Dell, TweetBeep, TweetScan, Twitter, Twitter Search