How Companies Benefit From Responding To Tweets.
Have you ever had to ask a question to a specific company but didn't have the time to call those dreaded 1–800 numbers? Join the wave by mentioning the company you are trying to reach through the popular social media app called Twitter. “Twitter is a social media and online news platform where people communicate in short messages — up to 240 characters long — called tweets. Founded in 2006, Twitter is now one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. It’s currently ranked №8 in the United States and №13 internationally, according to internet analytics company Alexa”(Driver, 2015).
Bussiness use Twitter to grow their platform, get noticed, and respond to customers. If they use the app right, they will notice responding to customers in a timely appropriate manner is the way to go, or they could also follow the three stages of customer service on Twitter. Below, I will explain the three stages and provide how businesses either excelled in a stage or did not follow a stage, leading to hate or backlash from their customers.
The first stage is by answering direct mentions about your company and resolving an issue presented in the mention.
As we can see, Old Spice did a great job at responding to a customer in a timely matter, regardless of the customers follower count. They saw they were mentioned, using some kind of software I would assume like Tweetdeck, and tackled the situation.
On the contrary, we can see in the above picture, that Bank of America did not use one of the three stages of customer service at all, regardless of the customer stating a problem. This tweet also got two likes and one retweet, which does not help Bank of Americas case in the slightest. By not responding this causes the customer to feel a certain way about the company.
As we move along, the second stage is really not a huge difference than the first stage, more so a continuation. In the second stage we can see the issue is resolved and the company is doing so by responding to mentions in a quick and effective manner.
Now, I do personally find these array of tweets to be interesting and comedic in a sense. Obviously, the customer was very angry with the Bank of America, which they did a poor job of answering their customers tweet. However, Chase support got right on the tweet and saw the opportunity to use their mention to gain a new customer.
Following along the lines of responding to mentions quickly, like Chase Bank did, below, is another array of tweets that shows British Airways effectively responding to a customer, although the customer did not seem to find the tweet response very effective. What could they have done better? British Airways could have resolved the problem before it had to come to a tweet, leaving the customer happy instead of annoyed(which he obviously was).
Lastly, the third stage of customer service is to respond to tweets using proactive engagement. What this means specifically is to respond to issues or delight, when appropriate.
Below are two companies that excel in tweet responses, whether they are funny, whether they are a shot at the customer, whether they are agreeing, these companies get noticed and sometimes go viral.
To wrap the Twitter experience for businesses up, I want to show a graph that shows how customers appreciate when their tweets are answered and attended to.
This graph I feel is a perfect way for businesses to really get a picture on how satisfied a customer is when the company responds. It not only satisfies the customer but it shows brand awareness for your specific brand. If you do Twitter right as a bussines, you gain loyal customers.
