Business and Twitter

Read an interesting article today on “How Twitter will ruin your Customer Service” but it left me feeling that the author was shooting at the wrong target.  Indeed, this was the gist of at least one of the comments made on the article.

I have participated in a number of similar on-line discussions which ask why PowerPoint is so bad.

Neither Twitter nor PowerPoint is intrinsically bad.  They are tools and, like all tools, they will perform best in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.

The reason many of us have suffered ‘death by PowerPoint’ is that a vast majority of people who use it have never been trained to give a presentation, don’t want to give a presentation or just don’t have the right personality to give a presentation!  They would be equally bad given any presentation tool; it’s not the fault of PowerPoint.

Likewise, in this article, the scenario described is not the fault of Twitter – it’s the fault of the company in question.

Here’s a quote from the author – “Social media has only been widely popular for about a decade, and already people have forgotten just how efficient and effective having an actual conversation can be.”

Here’s the tweet from her colleague: “Messed up that I can't get a Xbusiness employee on the phone after 55min on hold, but I can get a Twitter response in less than 2 minutes."

Clearly, the customer hasn’t forgotten because he’s been trying for at least 55 minutes to have a conversation.  The customer service policy of the company in question certainly needs overhauling because they aren’t having the conversation via this route.

However, let’s assume that they know they have a problem.  This could be what happens next:

The employee fires a tweet back to the customer, acknowledging the issue and asking for contact details via a direct message.

The customer provides their details and they get sent to the part of the customer service department that is working properly.  The CS department picks up the telephone, call the customer and resolve the issue.

It doesn’t make for such a dramatic story but it’s a good way to use Twitter if your front-line call desk is under-staffed or over-used.

In my opinion, Twitter should never be used as a tool to try and solve a problem.  It’s another route to initiate the conversation, that’s all, one tool amongst many.  If you want to provide good customer service, you use a multitude of tools and please understand what you are trying to achieve with them.

Does anyone have any good Twitter/customer service stories to share?