Twitter created this feature and other new tools after several discoveries, including the fact that more than 80 percent of inbound social customer service requests to Twitter advertisers occur on the platform. Recent research done on tweets to airlines also shows that customers who receive a response to a question or complaint are willing to pay more for their next purchase.
For surveying customers to accurately measure and improve their services, small businesses that use Customer Feedback will also have access to the industry standard question formats of Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS®) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).
Capturing Customer Feedback
Phil Ash, CEO of Baton Investing, is looking forward to using the Customer Feedback feature with his company Twitter account. “As an ongoing user of Net Promoter Score, Twitter’s new private Customer Feedback feature should increase the response rates on our company’s existing survey data collection efforts,” he says. “Considering the growing number of customer service interactions in the public Twittersphere, I also think that businesses and customers will appreciate the reduced noise that this feature brings.”
Joseph Michelli, CEO of The Michelli Experience, calls this feature “a huge breakthrough. It allows customers to give their feedback quickly about the quality of the transaction and their emotional engagement, likely loyalty and likely advocacy. This real-time data should allow business owners to link back to an actual service interaction, fix individual breakdowns, look at processes that need to be fixed, celebrate great customer experience moments and coach staff in ways that improve their customer service delivery.”
The Customer Feedback feature may have not only the potential to capture customers’ sentiments, but to leverage them, according to Dave Kerpen, founder of the software company Likeable Local, which helps small businesses automate social media, and author of The Art of People. “We will definitely be testing this feature with some of our customers,” Kerpen says.
Providing a Private Channel
“The ability to take conversations on Twitter and turn them into private channels is huge and can be very helpful for small businesses,” says Kerpen. “Twitter has struggled with managing and monetizing all of the conversation about small businesses, and this new feature could be a huge step toward finally leveraging all that conversation.”
Anna Levesque, owner of Mind Body Paddle and Girls at Play, shares that she hasn’t been very active on Twitter, opting instead for other social media platforms, but now she is considering using Twitter more often.
“Getting customer feedback is helpful in providing high-quality customer service and customer experience,” Levesque says. “This is especially important for a service/experience-based company like mine, where customers want to be heard and taken care of in a personal way.”
Avoiding Social Media Misunderstandings
Perhaps most importantly, the new Customer Feedback feature may help small businesses avoid potentially damaging misunderstandings in the noise of cyberspace, believes Shannon Nicholson, online reputation manager for Wasabi Publicity, Inc.
“Twitter and other social media platforms are already go-to places for customers to sing positive praise or air their negative experiences,” Nicholson says. “Too often, the negative feedback gets lost in the Twittersphere, where unanswered complaints reflect poorly on the companies that aren’t quick to respond. The Customer Feedback tool is an intelligent step forward by Twitter to help their business members proactively manage customer feedback and, consequently, their online reputation.”
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