People love reaching out to businesses on Twitter because they can get connected to real people when they need help. Today, Twitter is launching a new feature – custom profiles in Direct Messages – that allows businesses to better emphasize that human element in private conversations, as well as more clearly indicate when a bot is speaking.
Our first partner to launch using this feature is T-Mobile, who has a long history of innovating to create great customer experiences on Twitter. Years ago, T-Mobile started using customers’ real names and agents’ initials in customer service-related Tweets. Last year, they started adding agents’ pictures and names to Tweet replies by linking to custom bio web pages for each agent. Now,@TMobileHelp is the first account to use custom profiles in Direct Messages, making private conversations more human and personal by showing the real face, name, and title of the care agent who is speaking.
The award-winning T-Mobile team is famous for care because we’re constantly looking for ways to improve and personalize the customer experience. We’re proud to be the first company to deliver an even more personalized experience through Twitter custom profiles.
According to our research, personalized experiences with a human connection can create significant benefits for businesses. 77% of people are likely to recommend a brand following a personalized customer service interaction on Twitter. Additionally, people are 19% more likely to feel like they’ve reached a resolution and 22% more likely to be satisfied compared to those who had impersonal interactions with a business on Twitter.
While T-Mobile uses custom profiles to highlight the human aspect of their service, custom profiles also create the opportunity for businesses to add personality to automated experiences by incorporating real or fictional characters, like branded bots. Custom profiles can help people identify when they are speaking to a human versus not, which helps manage their expectations about the types of replies they might receive.
The new versions of our Direct Message APIs, currently in private beta, now include support for custom profiles. If you’re a business looking to enable custom profiles in Direct Messages please let us you’re interested here. Developers looking to build on the new API platform can apply for access here.
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