How Twitter is changing the customer service equation

A recent study found that:

… at least once a week, 33% of active Twitter users share opinions about companies or products, while 32% make recommendations and 30% ask for them.

The April 2010 study by ROI Research was commissioned by Performics and is available here.

The good and bad

Twitter allows awareness of your customer service quality to propagate quickly through a community or the public at large. On the plus side, the benefits of providing good service can be felt more quickly and more strongly. On the downside, stories of bad service propagate even more quickly.

Don’t give people an easy target for complaints

Make sure you fill the social media echo chamber with good echoes, not bad. Step 1: Don’t give people an easy target for complaints!  Two such easy targets are bad phone menus and long hold times. The good news is they are easy to fix. Fonolo’s visual navigation and virtual queuing services can turn those bad echoes into good echoes with no changes to your call center and minimal expense.