Most of the customer service operations have moved from call centers to social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Because of the popularity of Twitter for business purposes, it becomes very important for the companies to maintain their page on Twitter and run their customer services through it. There are many customers on Twitter, who like to query and get answered on Twitter itself and there are very few people these days, who actually contact the call centers to get their queries resolved. The trend is changing. That is the reason we should take the following steps to improve our customer services through interaction on Twitter:
1. Maintain your company page on Twitter
In order to offer prompt customer services it is very important to start handling queries using Twitter. It is meant for short and direct messages that work wonders as far as quick responses are concerned. Customers appreciate quick and prompt answers and tweets that can solve their problems. It also works magically, because a happy customer can tweet to thousands of his followers about your great customer service in a matter of seconds. It’s lightning fast and is free word-of-mouth publicity that you could earn through social media.
2. Pro-actively handle negative comments
Handle negative sentiments before they become uncontrollable and cause harm to your reputation. Twitter is a great platform, which provides you advanced search options, which you can use with your company name. It will give you a great insight into what’s being said about your company on social media. You can pro-actively contact those customers, who are saying bad things about you. You can offer some goodies or free gifts to them and assure them that customers are on top for you. This way you take the bull by horns, before it attacks you and causes a catastrophe.
3. Look for the positive feedback
Just as negative sentiments are important to be fixed before they become a problem you, you should also reward and encourage positive comments. This way, your satisfied customers get to know that you are aware of their positive feedback and goodwill messages. If you reward them through a thank you note, a discount or some free gifts, they will happily repeat the exercise. It’s another good way to get free publicity. It is therefore imperative that you follow your fans on Twitter, who are spreading good things about your company.
4. Mention your customer service contact information
On Twitter, you should mention your customer service contact information on your profile itself. Remember, this is a very important social media channel where relevant conversations take place round the clock and that too beyond geographical boundaries. It is therefore imperative that all of your customer service information, including the local numbers and website address is given in the profile. It is very important to know that every query or question cannot be contained in 140 characters, it is therefore important to let your customers know where they can contact you to get further information.
5. Create voice for your brand
Though, this task is better handled by customer service representatives in call centers, as it is very personalized way to interact with real human beings on phone to address your queries. However, this thing cannot be ignored on social media channels, though it is a little difficult. You have to hire a person, who can speak on behalf of your brand and also do personal tweets. Customers find it easy to re-tweet your messages, rather than narrate their great experience with your company. You should also engage your customers through some humorous but professional tweets related to your brand in your social interactions. This way you can distinguish yourself from the crowd and would also be able to help your customers in a better way.
6. Reduce your cost and training time
Social media channels like Twitter are absolutely free of cost, and you do not need to set up any infrastructure for that. You can use it wherever you are and download TweetDeck, a free tool. You can train your social media executives on how to use these tools provided by Twitter.
7. Optimize your customer service resources
You can increase your customer service output by optimizing your resources. In the call center, sometimes customer service representatives sit idle between the calls. You can make them log on to Twitter duty (twuty) during their downtime, so that they can address the queries on Twitter and resolve the issues your customers are facing. This way, you not only improve your customer service output, but also optimize your existing resources, without having to hire more people for customer service.
8. Save time using Twitter
In telephonic customer service, there are many handicaps. First of all, you might have to wait in the queue waiting to get assisted by a customer service representative available. Choosing options is also a frustrating activity on the IVR. Then, after the normal greetings, customer service rep usually puts you on hold so that he can retrieve your account information. It takes up time. Queries on twitter can be handled instantly and without having to wait for the phone service officer to assist you for simple and minor issues. If you’re not in a hurry, you can simply make a query on twitter and it would be addressed within 24 hours.
We at Invoicera also provide customer service on Twitter and other social media platforms or you can directly mail us at support@invoicera.com. We are always there to help you.
