How To Use Twitter As A Customer Support Platform

In today's business landscape, providing exceptional customer service involves meeting people where they are.

For the majority of people, that place is social media.

Twitter, in particular, is an essential platform for business owners.

Why so?

The social media platform has approximately 217 million monetizable daily active users. This represents an excellent opportunity to increase conversions by responding to customer and prospect questions, responding to criticism, and elevating your brand.

In addition, according to social media customer service statistics, 64% of Twitter users would instead message a dedicated support handle than contact a business.  

This number will only grow as the internet generation ages and becomes more active consumers.

Many businesses are unsure how to use Twitter for customer support. Today, our West Palm Beach SEO experts will go over it in this post.

5 Twitter Customer Support Tips

If you use social media correctly, you can help customers much faster. With only 280 characters in a Tweet, you must write concise messages that get right to the point.  

It's also an excellent opportunity for you to connect with customers by using a friendlier, more fun tone.

But keep in mind that everything on social media is public. Here are some best practices for providing excellent customer support on Twitter:

1. Create a Dedicated Twitter Support Account.

When you're setting up a support system for your business, creating a unique Twitter handle is the way to go.

Your primary business account can continue to serve as a resource for your followers to learn more about your brand and what's going on, but those followers won’t be interested in hearing about everything that happens in the support channel.

Consider Adobe, a software company whose suite of creative tools is used by many creatives and creators. They have a dedicated @AdobeCares Twitter account, which they use to feature their followers' work and respond to customer inquiries.  

When customer questions and complaints begin to pour in, the responses are thorough—frequently asking questions and providing additional resources to walk customers through a self-service fix:  

If an immediate resolution is not possible, such as when customers provide product feedback or suggest an update, Adobe is upfront about whether or not a suggestion will be feasible.  

They also offer ways for customers to work around the problem in the meantime.

2. Know the Ins and Outs of Twitter's Communication Tools.

Whether you're a solopreneur or a giant corporation, you can add many Twitter tools to almost any type of account—which allows you to provide customer service in a very accessible manner:

• Direct Messages (DMs): This feature is optional and can be turned on or off anytime. Allowing your customers to direct message you creates a more appropriate environment for sensitive or lengthy topics that would otherwise be inappropriate for character-limited tweets. ‍

• Quick Replies: This tool is ideal for business owners because it allows you to create a bank of automated responses. Quick replies will save you time and decrease your average response time when responding to customers. However, use it sparingly if you don't want to appear robotic. The combination of live chat and prompt responses strikes the perfect balance for excellent customer service.

• Private Message Link: This is a link that you can include in your tweet to invite your counterpart to continue the conversation via Direct Messages. Moving a customer inquiry to a private message can be helpful in sensitive cases to avoid a public scene. You can direct people to speak with you privately with the click of a button if you add a "Send Private Message" link to your tweets. Adding this code link to your tweet will avoid frustration from less tech-savvy clients.

Remember that knowing the ins and outs of Twitter or any other social media platform is critical to fully maximizing what you can offer your clients and prospects.

3. Keep Track of Brand Mentions and Keywords.

Keeping track of what people say about your brand on Twitter is critical for implementing and constantly improving customer service. Reading what people say about you "behind your back" can help you understand the following:

• Your customers' perception of your business
• Your customers' pain points
• Customer complaints you may have missed on your brand's main account

But, with billions of tweets published every minute, how do you do that?

You can do so with Twitter @mentions.

With @mentions, your customers can tag your brand to let you know that they want to tell you something. In the same way, your customers can also use hashtags to categorize tweets and make them easier to find in customized search results.

Some tweets, however, may not contain obvious hashtags related to your brand's name. This is where you should be creative and use tools designed for the purpose.

These monitoring tools can send alerts based on specific hashtags and keywords associated with your brand or your competitors.

RELATED: 18 Best Hashtag Tracking Tools to Monitor Your Social Success

4. Humanize Your Customer Support Team

A company's customer support team should understand a client's requests and successfully answer their demands—paying attention to what customers desire and being empathetic in problem resolution.

This perfect match between the user's needs and desires and precise answers from more humane support is critical to establishing a warm connection, fostering communication, and a better understanding of the buyer.

The best way to show the human side of your brand is to highlight your support team. You can accomplish this in several ways:

• Tell your CS support to refer to themselves as "I" and "we" when they respond to a customer's tweet.
• Use real emotions as much as possible.
• Don't forget to include the codename or the initials of the team member who responded to the customer's tweet.
• Always use a conversational tone.

Just take a look at how Domino's responded to this customer:

Remember, rethinking how the organization communicates with its clients is critical to improving customer service.

5. Respond as Fast as Possible

This is, without a doubt, our West Palm Beach SEO experts' most important Twitter customer support tip. Remember that your customers are your revenue source, and you don't have much of a business without them. So, it's critical to keep them happy.

On Twitter, the average response time for businesses is 33 minutes and 44 seconds. Twitter is a very immediate platform, and it is generally regarded as more informal than Facebook. Users expect you to check tweets and respond to them much more quickly.

If you start a conversation, don't be surprised if it turns into a series of back-and-forth tweets.

Why is speed important in customer support?

Let's start with the obvious: prompt responses make your customers feel valued.

Second, speed is essential in customer service because your customers expect it!

According to the CMO Council, the most crucial attribute of a good customer experience, according to the customers, is a quick response time. As a result, responding quickly indicates that you are meeting customer expectations.

So, how do you respond to your customers' tweets ASAP? Just go back to our first three tips:

• Create a dedicated Twitter support account.
• Know the ins and outs of Twitter's communication tools.
• Keep track of brand mentions and keywords.

Start Offering the Best Twitter Customer Support Now!

Twitter customer service does not have to be complicated. It's simply a matter of being deliberate and unique.

Twitter, however, is not the only place where you can interact with your target audience. Your decisions will impact various platforms, including your website, client relationship management, other websites, chatbots, and other online marketing tools.

Customers who mention your company on Twitter should be able to obtain all necessary information from a single customer support platform.  

That way, you'll be able to respond in a truly personalized and impactful manner, regardless of where or when it comes from.

All of these things, and more, can be handled by Digital Resource's West Palm Beach SEO experts.

Don't hesitate to contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you in improving your customer experience.