This visibility is what makes Twitter (and other forms of open social media) so interesting from a customer service perspective.

I mean, think of how we normally interact with customer service:

...you phone them.

And what is phoning customer service like?

...typically a frustrating and isolated feeling.

You ring, you navigate a voice menu, you enter some account details, you get transferred, you give the account details again (and again) and then you get cut off. Arrrggh!!

The above will resonsate with many people.

In phone calls such as this many is the time I have thought "I WISH I was able to record this! I want this conversation recorded for auditing & escalation". With social media the recording is already taking place.

Eg if I tweet to a known brand about a customer service issue not only can anyone see this request but Google can index it. The exchange is happening in public; no place to run, no place to hide.

The brand can ignore me if they like; but that ignorance will also be recorded. Ha!

The can put someone ill equipped & ill trained to respond professionally to my tweet and do themselves some greater brand damage.

But they can also sensibly and thoughtfully handle the situation; defusing my concerns and turning a frown into a smile in a VERY public arena. Why not turn me into someone who'll say something nice about their brand?

Unsurprinsgly many orgs are staying away from Twitter so they can avoid this customer service battleground but we are starting to see more basecamps being made.

Take BT for instance (for the sake of non-UK, BT is the big telecoms company here). They now have the @btcare account. This account has 56K updates (no slouch!) and if you look at their tweets you'll see they are trying damn hard to address customer issues; not just trying damn hard to get the issues "off air".

So, if you're a company which has a customer service dimension (who hasn't!?) then you'll need to engage on Twitter. Fail to do so and you'll look like a chicken. Bwaaaar bwwwaaar! (That's a chicken noise).

Joel

Ps I've got a follow up post planned for this already :)

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device