Using Twitter to Interact with your Customers

It is not often in the UK that one has heard the words 'hats off to' and 'BT' in the same phrase, but that is what I must say today, at least for one thing.

Why do I acclaim BT in this way? Well quite simply for the way they are monitoring Twitter. It was yesterday morning when I tweeted about my broadband being slow and that I was waiting for BT to fix it. Then not an hour later came a @reply from BT customer care saying that they were sorry that I was having problems and sending me a link with some ways that might helpfix the issue.

This is a good use of Twitters Search facility (or perhaps Topsy - see www.topsy.com) as it allows anyone to 'engage' (the secret they say of using Twitter properly and getting the most out of it) with other Tweeters.

Obviously, this engagement could lead to other things, in the end perhaps a sale? If not then at least the person trying to engage will have been seen in the others 'timeline' (if they respond, which all should do - 'manners you know') and that can only raise their awareness level, which after all is what it is all about.

So hats off to BT for the monitoring Twitter so carefully (they have yet to fix my line though!).

If you want to monitor Twitter, then just keep using the Search facility, or better still use Topsy, pay the little bit extra and get 15 min alerts. This means that within just 15 mins of someone using a keyword (or your name) you can know about it and @reply to them with help, news, views or a request for more info so that you can help. You never know where it might lead...

This of course can also help with Brand protection (see yesterdays Blog post) as a quick response would show that you care and could also turn that customer's bad feelings around. They could end up a great supporter and start telling everyone about how great you are....

Of course there are some companies that cannot do much to rescue their brand and thus any efforts would certainly be much like flogging that dead horse (yes you guessed it I'm referrring to my old friends at Crazycameras) but for many others, monitoring Twitter carefully could well be a very very good idea.

More tomorrow