Pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice when cus­tomers have lots of chan­nels to share their expe­ri­ences can cre­ate frus­tra­tion and frag­men­ta­tion for the cus­tomer and pub­lic rela­tions night­mares for brands. How can com­pa­nies cre­ate an excep­tion­al brand expe­ri­ence, delight their cus­tomers, and cre­ate cost effi­cien­cies with­in their cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ments?

Here are sev­en win­ning Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice strate­gies.

1. Create Unique Account For Customer Service Needs

Com­pa­nies like Delta (@DeltaAssist) and Nike (@NikeSupport) have cre­at­ed suc­cess­ful accounts to ser­vice cus­tomers needs on Twit­ter. They have ded­i­cat­ed accounts spe­cif­ic to the pur­pose of sup­port.

The @NikeSupport account has more than 360,000 tweets that have been ded­i­cat­ed to issue res­o­lu­tion as well as pro­vid­ing ath­letes with encour­age­ment. The sup­port they pro­vide runs the gamut from prac­ti­cal (how to get runs back I lost on my app) to inspi­ra­tional (way to go! we’re root­ing for you).

The Nike brand is built on the sup­po­si­tion that we should all “Just Do It” and the ath­lete, whether week­end war­rior or Olympic Marathon run­ner, are all equal­ly impor­tant.

2. Empower Customer Service To Resolve Issues

If your brand is ded­i­cat­ing a cus­tomer ser­vice account for Twit­ter, they have to be empow­ered to make deci­sions and resolve issues. Delta’s sup­port account, @DeltaAssist makes it clear that they are avail­able to help resolve issues, but if you need imme­di­ate assis­tance they pro­vide a domain and a phone num­ber for quick­er response.

Cre­at­ing expec­ta­tion quick­ly can help cus­tomers as well as sup­port staff. That pro­vi­sion of clar­i­ty goes a long way in estab­lish­ing rea­son­able and achiev­able expec­ta­tions.

3. Provide Clarity About Issues Twitter Customer Service Can & Can’t Resolve

It’s imper­a­tive to pro­vide clar­i­ty, not just to your Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice team but to your cus­tomers about what they can and can’t resolve. If a cus­tomer spends 30 min­utes engag­ing with a Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice account only to be told that that per­son can’t resolve their issue, the cus­tomer will right­ly be frus­trat­ed at the loss of time, delays, and increased frus­tra­tion.

In this exam­ple from @ComcastCares it’s clear that either the cus­tomer ser­vice staff is under resourced (many respons­es apol­o­gize for delays) or it’s ques­tion­able if Com­cast real­ly does care.

It’s not the fault of the cus­tomer ser­vice staff if they have more respons­es than they can quick­ly resolve, respon­si­bil­i­ty lies in staffing and cre­at­ing resource des­ig­na­tion for the Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice effort.

Your staff must be empow­ered to make deci­sions or the brand needs to bet­ter clar­i­fy what type of ser­vice cus­tomers can expect from the Twit­ter sup­port account. That clar­i­fi­ca­tion needs to take into account what their cus­tomers expect. Post-ser­vice sur­veys and oth­er qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive data can be used to find the sweet spot of effi­cien­cy and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.

4. Have A Personality

Cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives need to go through brand immer­sion and under­stand the brand voice. If your brand is fun and wit­ty, the Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice respons­es should embrace that brand voice.

The Twit­ter Zap­pos sup­port account, @Zappos_Service exists to help with cus­tomer ser­vice. This account exem­pli­fies the fun, here-to-serve per­son­al­i­ty of the Zap­pos brand.

5. Be Part Of The Brand Story

Unlike the call cen­ter where issues are resolved in rel­a­tive pri­va­cy, issues resolved on Twit­ter will be a mat­ter of record and be sub­ject­ed to shar­ing. This makes the need for role clar­i­ty and own­er­ship that much more impor­tant in Twit­ter and oth­er social chan­nels lever­aged for cus­tomer ser­vice.

Cre­at­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice guide­lines for Twit­ter and oth­er chan­nels is imper­a­tive to how Twit­ter will be seen for your brand as a res­o­lu­tion chan­nel. If your cus­tomer ser­vice team under­stands “com­man­ders intent” and is giv­en role clar­i­ty and own­er­ship of resolv­ing issues Twit­ter can prove to be a valu­able and cost-effec­tive chan­nel.

Respons­es should be craft­ed thought­ful­ly with the under­stand­ing that the rep­re­sen­ta­tive is cre­at­ing a bill­board for the brand that many peo­ple may see. If a strate­gic roadmap isn’t cre­at­ed for cus­tomer engage­ment and issue res­o­lu­tion it will be appar­ent quick­ly and dam­ag­ing to the brand’s rep­u­ta­tion.

6. Provide A Seamless Customer Service Experience

Map out what the cus­tomer ser­vice process should look like and how Twit­ter fits into that ecosys­tem. Have a way to iden­ti­fy the prob­lem or issue, whether by a cus­tomer iden­ti­fi­er (such as a fre­quent fly­er num­ber) or oth­er iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion, regard­less of where the cus­tomer takes the prob­lem.

For exam­ple, the @Zappos team, whether on the reg­u­lar Twit­ter account or their sup­port account, is empow­ered to resolve issues. They don’t add a lay­er of com­plex­i­ty by refer­ring the cus­tomer to a dif­fer­ent chan­nel.

7. Engage In Twitter Customer Service Analysis

Iden­ti­fy the top ques­tions, prob­lems, issues cus­tomers are hav­ing and cre­ate an FAQ to share that may con­tin­ue to increase speed of issue res­o­lu­tion.

Twit­ter (not sur­pris­ing­ly;) does this real­ly well. They have cre­at­ed a form that iden­ti­fies top issues, then pro­vides drop downs and com­ment box­es so they can get a clear under­stand­ing of the prob­lem as well as define if a solu­tion has already been craft­ed that they can share.

This can be a great place to curate prob­lems and ques­tions to lever­age in the con­tent map­ping process. If brands take time to ana­lyze cus­tomer ser­vice tweets and learn from that cus­tomer engage­ment, not only can we make cus­tomers hap­pi­er, we can turn them into brand advo­cates.

Takeaways

Twit­ter cus­tomer ser­vice sup­port is no longer a “nice-to-have”. For most brands, it’s a cus­tomer expec­ta­tion. Just as in the ear­ly days of social, to quote Char­lene Li, author of “Groundswell”, you can choose whether or not to par­tic­i­pate, but your cus­tomers will be there with or with­out you.

Twit­ter sup­port deserves the same brand immer­sion, brand sto­ry­telling and brand resource des­ig­na­tion as any chan­nel on or offline. Not only are those cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ences rel­e­vant to the cus­tomer jour­ney, but they are also a record of how we treat our cus­tomers. Some­times tak­ing an unhap­py cus­tomer and mak­ing them hap­py can be a most unlike­ly but proven path to cus­tomer advo­ca­cy and loy­al­ty.

Are you pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer ser­vice on Twit­ter?