Twitter offers new tools for customer service

There are certainly exceptions, but on the whole, businesses just suck at responding to people on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter has understood this problem, and has now introduced two new tools, that will help businesses tremendously – they have made it easy for businesses to have private direct messaging with their customers and get customer feedback.

Twitter is incorporating these new business tools with its current line of customer service features through collaborations with Sprout Social, Salesforce, Sprinklr, Spredfast, Lithium, Hootsuite, Sparkcentral and Conversocial.

First and foremost, brands can now incorporate a “send a private message” button into their tweets, allowing Twitter users to begin conversations based on a public tweet. Customer feedback collected on Twitter is surfaced in a Customer Feedback Report that shows Net Promoter Scores and other data. While that idea seems great for customer service, one has to wonder whether companies will get more than they’re asking for at times.

Second, Twitter is adding an option for businesses to privately ask you for feedback after a customer service interaction.

“Understanding customer satisfaction in relation to the service we’re giving on social is incredibly important to Caesars, and we’re excited to embrace these two features to facilitate that understanding”, said its VP of digital, Greg Cannon. We’re making that transition as easy as a single click.

It’s not an enormous change to the site’s mechanic, but it should stop you feeling like you’re shouting into the void when calling out a company on Twitter. Tapping on the link allows the conversation to continue in a private area (ie.as direct messages) where personal details can be exchanged, if necessary.

The DM deep links work now, and the customer feedback feature will roll out to select brands over the coming weeks.

“Twitter is live, public, and conversational – and the best place for businesses and customers to connect”, Ian Cairns, a Twitter product manager, said in a blog post.