Twelp is at hand...
4th Nov 2009
I’m starting to get a really strong feel for how social media is being used to enhance 2-way communication with customers. Over the pond, BestBuy have introduced their own Twitter channel to provide help to customers post-purchase (it’s called Twelpforce – both a neat and a clumsy name all in one – quite an achievement).
Anyhow, this raises some questions, a big one being how you integrate all of this information into your regular communication channels and of course your CRM. It’s also hard to regulate, because you need some standards for moderation of customer feedback as well as ensuring your own employees aren’t going to flame your products/services/business/managers/colleagues... the more open you are, the more you leave yourself exposed to ‘brand blotting’ behaviour. That does of course presuppose you having a decent company in the first place – if your culture is bad, then this might be high risk, but that’s a whole other discussion.
In terms of integration, this could be worth looking at. It’s a real-time customer service and support forum for any company that uses Twitter. It enables businesses to collect customer ideas, problems, questions and mentions via Twitter, connect these to employees and then play around with tweets in terms of grouping and moderation.
I guess it’s all buzz at the moment and the wheat will be sorted from the chaff, but a well managed social channel does demonstrate a real empathy for understanding how people are communicating among themselves, which can’t be a bad thing for any brand that’s bothered about customer proximity and keeping a finger on the pulse.
Our Digital Director Tom Marrows is a good person to talk to about this sort of challenge.
Published by
Peter Smith, B2B Solutions Director
peter@creationagency.com, 07764 898007
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