

Less than a fifth of companies have embraced Twitter for customer service - kevinxray
http://www.callcentrehelper.com/less-than-a-fifth-of-comapniese-have-embraced-twitter-for-customer-service-9362.htm

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morisy
It's a tough call on Twitter customer support: There's been some great success
stories and campaigns (see:DELL), but you can't really do much more than help
funnel people through your existing channels: "Sorry about your problem,
e-mail support at xxx," and everytime you do that publicly, you're pointing
those who do follow you to things going wrong. It takes a special skill and
dedicated employee to do right, which may or may not result in a net payoff.

The thing that bothers me more about Twitter support is how all the sudden
companies are expected to using one private protocol as an "official" channel,
when it's a protocol they don't own nor control. Nobody blames their local
grocery for not using AT&T instead of Verizon for their support calls, but all
the sudden you're not on Twitter, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction (all private
companies), and "you don't listen to your customers," even if you have a bevy
of other avenues.

Does this bug anyone else?

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code_duck
We have a twitter account for announcements. I find it quite inconvenient and
inappropriate when people send questions or messages through Twitter that
could be better handled through email. It's essentially a waste of time as the
twitter format is so limiting.... it's not possible to say anything detailed
or truly informative in those tiny messages.

That said, it is worth engaging customers and providing info on Twitter. I
wouldn't really call what it works well for 'customer service', however.

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htsh
If 15-20% of top companies are using twitter for customer service, that is a
tremendously good thing.

To frame it another way, if you told a startup that 15% of top companies would
be using their startup for customer service within a few years of launching,
most people would take that in a heartbeat.

Also, this early I don't think the actual number is as important as how fast
its growing/shrinking. It'd be useful if they showed us last year's number and
I'll be curious to see next's...

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brazzy
A tremendously good thing... for Twitter. Whether it's any good for the
companies or their customers is an entirely different matter.

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MicahWedemeyer
_20 per cent of ‘tweets’ contain a reference to a product or brand_

What % of those were auto-retweets, tweet bots, or were originated by the
brand owner? "Real" tweeters seem much less inclined to do this brand-whoring
than this 20% figure implies.

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davidw
I don't think you can say much more than "it's broke" in 140 characters.

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eru
You can fit in some curses.

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rue
Less than a fifth of companies have inserted a square peg in a round hole.
Actually, that is probably not quite accurate.

Anyway, if you read past 140 characters, neither is the headline. At the end
companies are singled out who have "a Twitter" but only use it as a
unidirectional medium (if at all) rather than responding to customers'
communications. It should be fairly self-evident that Twitter is not a medium
for _actual_ customer service beyond the very cursory.

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jsz0
Having some past experience doing technical support I don't really understand
why people would try to make Twitter a customer service tool. It's really just
the wrong tool for the job. Very few problems can be solved in 140 characters
short of "call this number, e-mail this address, IM this person" which is just
re-direction. Something like Google Wave would probably make more sense from a
support standpoint.

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Jim72
Communication with a CS representative requires a dialog. It has to be
interactive and dynamic. That is not Twitter. Twitter is not chat. Chat is a
back and forth exchange where people speak WITH each other. Twitter is
directed speech where people speak AT each other.

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jcnnghm
Using twitter for customer service is like using a scooter to tow a boat. You
could probably do it, but that doesn't mean it makes sense.

