Twitter: Your Own Personal Assistant

Most people already know that Twitter is a useful social media platform that can be used to communicate with friends and spread ideas. However, this platform can be utilized for more complex purposes as well.

As more businesses develop a social media presence, users are able to employ Twitter as a “personal assistant” that they can use to interact with businesses and share their experiences with other consumers. Similarly, many businesses have learned that Twitter makes an excellent customer service tool.

Twitter as a Personal Assistant

Twitter allows you to communicate with businesses quickly and effectively. The platform also allows you to share information with other consumers easily. For example, when you need to attract the attention of an overbooked physician, you can use Twitter to send the physician a public message. The physician is much more likely to respond to a message sent via Twitter because other potential patients are watching the interaction. In addition, responding to a tweet is quicker and easier than communicating with the patient using other methods.

When you have an exceptionally good or bad experience with a business, you can tweet the experience to the entire Twitter community. Essentially, each tweet about a certain business is like a review of the business’s services in 140 characters or less. If the tweet is positive, other consumers are more likely to interact with the business in the future. Conversely, negative tweets can harm a company’s reputation and cause other consumers to think twice before making a purchase. Tweeting about your experiences with a certain company may also get the company’s attention, as many businesses subscribe to programs that search Twitter for mentions of the company’s name.

Twitter as a Customer Service Tool

A business is only as good as the customer service it offers. When you are unhappy with the support you receive from a company, you probably won’t return for future purchases. To improve the quality of customer service operations, many businesses are now looking to Twitter. Customers are often turned off by impersonal emails, and most customers also dislike calling a company and being placed on hold for long periods of time. Twitter solves both of these problems by allowing a company’s staff to communicate with customers in real time.

One of the most underrated benefits of having staff interact with customers through social media is the effect of having employees experience how their actions directly affect the brand in the eyes of the customer.

Phone lines have serious limitations. When all lines are busy, you are forced to wait for an opening. However, by using Twitter, you can voice your concerns in seconds and receive a quick response. When the problem is small, a single tweet is sufficient to inform the company and elicit a response. For more complex issues, you can tweet to start an in-depth conversation with the company about your problem.

Companies using Twitter for customer support typically employ multiple staff members to monitor the Twitter account throughout the day and respond to customer tweets. In addition, if a company decides to use Twitter as its primary operation for customer support, the company will often have IT specialists available to maintain the necessary hardware and address operational issues on a daily basis. All of these practices ensure that your tweets will not go unnoticed and that you will receive a customized response quickly.