Tweets of the Week - January 18-22, 2010

Starting today, we will begin posting, here on the Parature Blog, all the tweets that we share each week on our Twitter account ( @Parature). Every week it is our goal to share interesting articles that we feel can help our followers learn best practices and discover new trends to continually improve their organization’s customer service delivery and ensure a great customer experience.

The Social Customer | Is Customer Service Really the New Marketing?
http://bit.ly/5YvWld
by Esteban Kolsky at TheSocialCustomer

Poor customer service costing firms
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7009911/Poor-customer-service-costing-firms-study-finds.html
by The Press Association

Cultivating a Customer-Focused Corporate Culture
http://bit.ly/73vW4r
by Henning Hansen at CRMBuyer

Consumer Expectations (video)
http://bit.ly/8VRj0Y
by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence
http://bit.ly/5C0gM5
by Parature at The Parature Blog

If you are interested in sharing links to valuable customer service or customer experience articles that we missed, please do so by posting a comment here or send us a tweet @Parature.

Parature Twitter Integration

Parature’s social media integration with Twitter empowers organizations to efficiently monitor tweets for proactive response and an improved customer experience.  Social channels such as Twitter provide an open forum for customers to air their grievances, give praise or simply inquire about an organization’s products, services or support.  These customer sentiments and inquiries are valuable sources of information that can be collected, measured and acted upon.  

This integration provides visibility into the volume, sentiment and impact of support through Twitter. Parature customers can compare Twitter traffic with other Parature support channels such as chat, ticket, email, phone, and Web portal content.  The integration enables customers to easily look at the “happiness” of tweets and hone in on which ones to route within their organization for comment, support or general knowledge; the number of tweets directed at the organization; and the impact of the organizations’ published content based on the number of re-tweets.  Tweets are easily isolated from other support traffic via the use of a Twitter Queue where support representatives can review and route them for a quick, accurate response, as well as create reports to analyze how many tickets are being generated from tweets.  Representatives can also view Twitter profiles directly from the Parature system allowing them to view other tweets to gauge disposition.

Is Twitter Part of Your Customer Service Strategy?

Popular social media channel – Twitter – provides an open forum for customers to air their grievances, give praise or simply inquire about an organization’s products, services or support.  These customer sentiments and inquiries are valuable sources of information and smart companies will take the opportunity to collect, measure and act upon this knowledge.  

Insight into the perception of your brand, products, or services provides the ideal opportunity for customer service teams to step up their service techniques.  In a Mashable’s article “HOW TO:  Use Twitter for Customer Service” they nicely articulate the major tenants of customer service and how they relate to Twitter:  problem resolution – it’s the main goal of customer service and Twitter provides a platform for a fast, easy response possibly in a single tweet; positive brand image – when someone receives service they like, they talk about it and Twitter provides a viral platform to spread the word which can lead to more sales and more attention; staff involvement – Twitter provides a more interesting platform for support representatives to serve the customer and provides immediate visibility into the impact they make; cost reduction – what every support organization wants and with Twitter it’s necessary to be short and to the point reducing the time required to solve each problem.

Additionally, customer service and support software integrations with social channels provide a unique opportunity for companies to monitor customer feedback, recognize trends and be proactive.  In the CRM June ‘09 issue a Datamonitor analyst says “savvy companies should recognize that social networking can be another channel for customer support.”  And a recent survey by SupportIndustry.com showed that 32% of respondents expect social networking apps to play a role in their support within the next year.

Tell us how social media fits into your support strategy.  Is your organization leveraging Twitter for support?  Is your organization monitoring Twitter or any social media channels?  Are you part of the 32% that expect social networking apps such as Twitter to play a role in your support in the next year?