The opportunity in providing great customer service on Twitter

Earlier this month, we published our new guide to customer service on Twitter. This is the first in a series of posts to highlight key concepts and examples from the playbook. As you’ll see, Twitter is transforming the way companies and customers interact, and the opportunity is enormous. Today, we begin with an overview.

As your brand seeks new ways to create meaningful connections with customers, Twitter can help. Twitter is not only a platform for people to connect with one another; it’s also a place for people to connect with brands. And that enables companies to deliver differentiated, scalable customer experiences with:

• Unparalleled reach and amplification through one-to-one-to-many interactions. Delighting customers on Twitter gives you an outsized impact. Conversations are open for the world to see, can be shared across the platform and embedded across other media.
• Real-time conversation with customers. As never before, brands can have a dialogue with customers, resolving issues while demonstrating their brand voice.
• Unprecedented insight into what customers really want and how they behave. Twitter is the world’s best focus group, enabling you to gather real-time insights directly from your customers, informing how you serve them as well as helping you make broader strategy and product decisions.
• Enhanced operational efficiency. Interactions on Twitter improve your ability to deliver exceptional customer service efficiently. Agents can respond more quickly and cheaply, often at a cost 80% less per interaction than by the phone.

Customer service on Twitter: Trending

Service is the most important driver of customer satisfaction – and when it comes to satisfaction, customers vote with their wallets. According to the Temkin Group, almost two-thirds of customers having a poor experience actually reduce their spend on that brand. Not only is customer service important; it’s everywhere! Increasingly, your customers are on Twitter. With 316M monthly active users, increasingly your customers are on Twitter.. And customers expect brands to meet them on Twitter. According to a study by NM Incite, 47% of social media users have used social care, and it’s growing across all age groups.

We’re seeing this trend in the growth of customer service conversations on Twitter. During the past two years, Tweets targeted at the Twitter accounts for customer service at leading brands are up 2.5X.

Not only are customers taking to Twitter for customer service; they have become more particular about the service they receive. Customers want freedom and flexibility on how, where and when they are served, demanding a more personal experience and 24/7 availability.

In short, customer service is more challenging than ever to deliver. Twitter helps you meet ever-increasing customer expectations with a tailored 1:1 experience.

It pays to do customer service on Twitter

Customer service teams are frequently tasked to balance the seemingly impossible: reduce operating costs, generate revenue and improve customer satisfaction. On Twitter, you can make improvements in all three of these areas.

Brands that take full advantage of customer service on Twitter see a range of benefits:

• Improved customer experience and satisfaction. A majority of companies list “increased customer satisfaction” as a top reason for offering customer service on Twitter. They have a good reason for doing so; 85% of customers who have a satisfactory interaction are likely to recommend the brand to others.
• Operational savings. Twitter customer service can save up to 80% per interaction compared to phone calls. Preemptive service can answer many questions before the customer even asks.
• New service-to-sales and revenue opportunities. Twitter fundamentally shifts the economics of proactively engaging customers, which can yield new and more targeted opportunities for meeting customer needs.
• Continuous insight and analytics. Twitter is the voice of your customer, providing real-time data that reflects the needs, desires and behaviors of your customers, which brands can use to generate insights on strategy.
• Brand building and earned media. Because Tweets are conversational and public, Twitter offers a one-to-one-to-many interaction which lets the broader community form an opinion on your service interaction.

We’re in the early stages of a revolution in the delivery of customer service. In the coming weeks, we will post more on this topic from case studies with cutting-edge companies to a step-by-step guide on how to deliver transformational customer service to your customers using Twitter.

If you’re looking to see the whole story today, download your free copy of the Twitter for Customer Service playbook now via Box (no registration required).