We adopted Twitter as one of our key support channels back in January so I thought I’d share some of our experiences so far and also the rationale for adding yet another support stream.
Problem resolution: The main goal of focussed customer service is to help clients resolve their issues. While phone conversations can help solve problems, wait times do not. Email might be faster to initiate from the client-side but suffers with a feeling that some support requests can disappear into a black hole.
Twitter is a lightning-fast platform that helps us sift through and solve problems quickly. If it’s a small issue, a single tweet may be enough. For a more complex problem, we can initiate a deeper conversation with the customer. We track conversations about us in the Twittersphere (find us @Connected_uk) and every mention gets flagged and dropped into our helpdesk system.
It’s easier, faster and better for everyone (who is on Twitter). Naturally, you can still contact us on 01138187800 (10:00 – 16:00 working days), via email [email protected] or via the web at connected.zendesk.com. We no longer support direct Basecamp requests, sorry.
Transparency: Great customer service gets talked about, and this can lead to more sales and more attention. Twitter is one of the most viral platforms around, which can make one happy customer into an international story. We can’t help benefiting from the positive brand image that comes out of this so love the great comments we get when things go well and really appreciate when we find out things are not so rosy – it gives us a chance to fix what is not right and hopefully shine. We are, after all, human and that means we are fallible so we can’t expect 100% of things to be going right 100% of the time.
Team involvement: Our entire team buys into the notion of helping our clients – they pay for our salaries, our 25hr working week and our unlimited holiday agreement. If they didn’t buy in then they are going to provide sub-par assistance. Twitter is not only a more interesting platform than phone or email, but gives the team a better picture of their impact on others.
Saves money: So far this year, client service via Twitter has taken less time, less money and has the lowest bounce rate. It also costs a good deal less than a dedicated call center and forms a cornerstone of our location-independent framework. Twitter is like that, it’s necessary to be short and to the point, which reduces the time needed to solve each problem.
It’s early days still with just 8% of support requests coming via this channel – the good news is this channel has the fastest response, lowest bounce and quickest fix rate. If you want to know more about how we support our clients using twitter than reach out.
Finally, we use lots of services from top of the tree companies such as Amazon AWS, WPEngine, Zendesk, Podio and GitHub but the best experience we’ve had so far in the Twitter world is from the excellent team at Podio. Very impressive.
by Martin Dower
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