Twitter is just about the WORST way to interact with customers.
Should My Company Use Twitter For Customer Service?
There isn’t an easy answer to the question, but if you want one in a nutshell, here it is: If your sole purpose in using Twitter is to deliver CUSTOMER SERVICE, it’s likely the investment in time won’t be terribly successful. If you want to use Twitter for MARKETING, there’s more potential there.
There are several issues with the use of Twitter for customer service:
- It doesn’t scale. The more people who contact you in Twitter, the higher your costs, in terms of the time it takes to respond, and not responding is probably worse than not having a Twitter account.
- As you add various social media platforms for customer service (and marketing) your COSTS go up because you can’t eliminate your existing methods for interacting with customers. You still need to man the phone, respond to emails, and deal with people in person, so social media channels don’t allow significant cost savings at all.
That’s not to say you should forget about Twitter completely as a customer service channel, but you should always be aware of the full picture, and that includes the costs.
