Twitter and customer service - what to do?
A new breed of pro-active customer service is developing fueled by Twitter. We think great companies need to build pro-active "customer engagement teams". These teams should handle both inbound service requests as well as outreach and engagement activities. If you do this right you can transform customer service from a cost center to a powerful marketing engine.
Kristi L. Gustavson from the Albany Times Union explores the topic in a recent article.
Customers are gaining clout
“The modern-day consumer has gained considerable power and clout because of social media, and especially Twitter,” says Larry Weintraub, CEO of Fanscape, a Los-Angeles-based digital word-of-mouth marketing agency. “Companies are on high alert, monitoring what people are saying about them in everyday conversations, or tweets.”
And companies are increasingly monitoring and responding
"Last spring, Jessica Gottlieb tweeted to her 10,000 followers about her children’s flight sitting on the tarmac at JFK. The gate attendant had no information for her, so she contacted her Twitter network (otherwise known as Tweeps). Seconds later, the airline was swamped with Tweets. Within five minutes, she had a call from the airline, indicating what was going on, that her kids had been taken care of on the plane and the gate attendant was informed of the situation.
“That is the status of customer service today, not in the future,” says Chris Stiehl, a professor of market research at The University of California Extension in San Diego. “Twitter gives the customer access to thousands of other customers, other voices in the market. Horror stories can spread very quickly,” Stiehl says."
Full text here: http://bit.ly/66P0YG
About us: Medallia software enables the whole company to listen to customer feedback and systematically act to improve the customer experience: http://medallia.com
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