Are we near the end of effective customer support via Twitter?

What has prompted me to even consider this article? Well I heard earlier that Best Buy, onsumer electronics retailer in the US, have launched a full customer support system using Twitter. They have launched their “Twelpforce” team and will now use Twitter as an official way of giving personal support to their customers.

They are encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions using Twitter. Basically Best Buy employees can use the @twelpforce account and their own Twitter account to register for the service. From then on tweets from the registered account will be displayed in a single stream on the @twelpforce account. All they have to do is append the hashtag #telpforce to tweets on their account.

But what does this mean for general customer support via Twitter?

Why is it effective?

The reason these corporate customer support accounts are run is to help their image on Twitter. As communication via Twtter is so fast they need to have people who know what they are doing and don’t need a script to follow, like a normal call centre. So the people running the account are normally experienced or a few levels above the standard CSO (Customer Service Officer).

The chances are that when you ask one of these accounts a complicated or unusual question it will get answered properly by someone who knows what they are talking about. This was the case with BT (British Telecom). I asked their account about canceling my service and instead of me waiting in a queue on a phone line I simply direct messaged my phone number and account number and they rang me back! No more wasting money ringing a so-called “freephone” number on my mobile/cell and it costing an arm and a leg. I was incredibly impressed with the service I get, despite the fact I was canceling their service.

But what was the secret to that? Well there are a few things that made the service really good:

1. They knew what they were talking about
2. The number of tweets with questions is a tiny fraction of the phone calls they get
3. The CSO’s are higher up and therefore can command people ring back or do things that aren’t in the script. Like using common sense.

What will happen when it gets popular?

As you can see with Best Buy they are now letting their own employees answer questions. This may be wise as they aren’t reading from a script but as soon as they get popular their support quality will deteriorate.

So what is most likely to happen is if the amount of questions to twitter increases corporations will then have to create proper support software in place and that can only lead to more scripting and “dumb” CSO’s. This basically means that if their Twitter based support gets popular they will have to integrate it into their overall customer support strategy, which can only be a bad thing.

How can we help?

They only thing we can do is be selfish! If we have some excellent support don’t tell every single person about it, the more popular it gets the faster the deterioration in support.

Please let me know what you think and I am open to any suggestions you may have. Even if it’s to say I am being totally cynical!

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