Customer service is an important factor in any business whether it’s online or offline but the question is always asked whether or not you should provide customer service over the social networks, and if you can – how to do it successfully. It’s important to note that customer service in any form helps to promote your business in the eyes of the consumer. Gone are the days of keeping customer service questions quiet and on the hush-hush. People are now taking to the social networks and making their questions known to you and everyone else. One such social network is Twitter.
Twitter is used by millions of people throughout the world and if you own a business, chances are you have customers that have purchased your products or services. If this is the case, you will find that many of your customers are not using the phone to call your company for customer service, and instead are simply sending you a tweet. This tweet, good or bad, can be seen by thousands. Of course this depends on all the followers you or the other person has. Should Twitter be the forum for providing customer service? It could be. In order to handle this properly, you will need to know what to do if you ever have to do customer service on Twitter.
- Reach out to your customers:
It will be very important to reach out to your customer and provide customer service. If you are on Twitter and receive a customer service request or complaint, take a moment and approach the situation with an open mind and complete control. You will need to engage your customer and find an alternative method of communication.
- Pursue other means of communication:
Find a way to move the conversation from the social media platform to another more workable solution like using the phone or email. This is simply being professional and letting the customer know that any customer service issues will be handled promptly and effectively. This will also prevent any issues from resulting in a tweet gone bad.
- Create a Twitter alternative:
Choose a twitter alternative and make sure everyone in your business is on board. If you decide to handle your customer service issues on Twitter, make sure everyone is aware of this as well. Whichever way works the best for your company simply make sure it’s handled the same way each and every time.
Twitter can be a very powerful customer service tool, but it can also backfire and be quite devastating. You will want to make sure that if you do have some customer service issues, deal with them promptly and professionally regardless of the working platform you choose.