Will We Witness a Customer Service Revolution Thanks to Twitter?

Does your business offer customer service via Twitter? 

Have you ever had cause to complain to or compliment a company on Twitter?

Personally I’ve often found it works better than phone or email. Take British Airways for example. I’ll get fed up hanging on phone. If it’s an urgent flight query email is too slow.

When tweeted British Airways are quick to reply. Other companies don’t embrace the instantaneous nature of Twitter though. Days can go by before ScotRail or TransPennine Express put fingers to keyboard.

There’s a flaw though.

The 140 character limit on tweets and twitter direct messages limits interactions. The company you’re tweeting with has to suggest an alternative method of communication to continue the conversation. And that usually means defaulting back to either phone or email.

Twitter are about to revolutionise customer service communications by removing the 140 limit from direct messages.

It’s genius.

They keep the micro-blogging advantage of the main social media platform but allow full conversations to take place in private.

For those companies that choose to embrace this innovation it’ll introduce a whole new opportunity to WOW their customers. Will you be doing this?

On the other side of the coin it also means those who choose to use automatic scheduling  software to send direct messages will be able to fill our in boxes with more clutter. But I’ll gladly put up with the latter’s inconvennience to take advantage of the former.

A question for you: How do you use Twitter to give great service to your customers? Please share your thoughts on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn.