Customer Feedback is valuable information for business improvement and growth. Although a more traditional business owner might advise you to stick to maintaining your customer care call center, there are actually many other alternatives which can go hand in hand with your call center. Thankfully, in this day and age, the boom of social media has opened doors into the minds of consumers, and in the most economical way possible.
While a phone customer hotline can truly be beneficial for you, exploring social media platforms allow you to actively pursue your audience, as opposed to waiting for them to call in when a certain need arises. In this article, we will discuss how you can take advantage of Twitter in acquiring customer feedback from your customers.
Make customers aware of your presence.
There are many brands that have decided to hop on the bandwagon, but failed to stay in the game. You see, there is much more to online presence than simply creating accounts in every social media platform—the key is proper maintenance.
Once you’ve created a Twitter account for your brand, do not forget to integrate it with your overall communication strategy. Whether you simply opt to use it for regular updates and announcements, or take it further with online gimmicks, just keep in mind that your followers must consistently see you to be aware you exist in the Twitterverse. The Internet is saturated with loads of content, so don’t allow your brand to get buried deep.
Ask questions.
The good thing with platforms such as Twitter is that, at any given time, you can communicate with thousands—maybe even millions—of people through a single post. As opposed to other customer service means (e.g. in-store customer care, etc.,) Twitter will allow you to actively and continuously tap your audience without having to wait for them to visit or call in.
One way to spark some discourse and reel in some comments about you is to ask some open-ended questions. You can subtly ask your followers about your products or services, or be more straightforward and ask them how they feel about your brand. What’s important is that you open up opportunities for your consumers to let you know what you think.
Have celebrity endorsers start polls or discussions.
Given how many brands have famous folks as endorsers nowadays, a great opportunity to put yourself out there and get people to share their opinion about you is by having your endorsers start the discussion. They can simply declare their love for your services, or even start a little poll about the different flavors of your products.
While this may seem far from the traditional way of getting customer feedback, like through face-to-face inquiries at your shop, you can count on Twitter users to take advantage of the 140-character limit to share their opinion with their beloved idols.
Establish a hashtag.
Getting lost and buried in the vast universe that is Twitter could happen, so it always helps to direct people toward a permanent hashtag for your brand. Let your customers know that, if they have any concerns, or if they have anything they want to share about your brand, they can very easily connect with you through that tag.
On your end, this will help immensely when you need to read up on what people have been saying!
Focus on being helpful.
Of course, among the primary purposes of your online presence is still being available to help your consumers out with their concerns. Nowadays, people spend most of their time in front of their computers, or even behind their smartphones. Many would prefer to send you a direct message or tweet you rather than spend a few minutes on the line just to reach your customer representative. Perhaps everyone is just a little less patient now, which makes the idea of being put on hold seem fearsome.
Keep it personal.
One of the good things about using Twitter for customer service is that you can actually still keep a personal touch. Instead of being an anonymous—perhaps even mysterious—identity behind a generic account, you can also opt to put a face to the person behind your tweets! That way, people will feel better that they are conversing with an actual human, not a robot.
Track entire conversations about your brand
This may sound almost like stalking, but it really just means doing some market research. By tracking your mentions and hashtags(#), you can get a better feel of how people perceive you and your products.
Again, this is something that cannot be achieved with more traditional customer service methods such as face-to-face inquiries and phone conversations. By simply spending a few hours on Twitter, you can gain a whole lot of insight from your customers.
Use Twitter as a springboard
There are just countless possibilities once you’ve already connected with your audience, so things can go so many different ways. The definite good thing, though, is that you can consider your Twitter account to be a springboard for further assistance (maybe after attending to your customer’s needs, you can endorse them to branch personnel for other gimmicks such as events and launches).
Though Twitter really began to cater to individuals who longed to connect and communicate with friends, there really is no reason why a brand should not take on a more personal form through a Twitter account to make its presence felt among its consumers. In essence, Twitter can allow you to reach out even more to your followers while getting to know them, and it is definitely worth a shot to pursue your customers and make them feel you genuinely care.
Author Bio: +Sheine Austria is a professional writer whose passion is digital media, technology and blogging. She also used to do some photography in her college days. Sheine is also a single mother, when she gave birth to her daughter, she decided to transfer to California and discover her future there.
8 Ways to Get Customer Feedback via Twitter
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