Twitter: it’s not just for fun any more

There’s been a deluge of blog posts recently examining how companies such as Southwest, Comcast, and Zappos are now using Twitter to improve customer service. Repeated examples point to instances where disgruntled customers send out a snarl of a tweet and get back near-instant replies offering resolution. To be fair, there are also numerous examples of positive tweets and the responses they net.

It got me wondering how I really feel about companies using social networks — originally designed for individuals to interact with other individuals — for marketing purposes. Because customer service is — or at least should be — a significant component of any marketing department.

David Armano notes among other things, that “The fact that Zappos and Southwest are finding success in a social network like Twitter is not surprising. These are companies that get both business and the customer experience.”

Over at ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez wrote an extensive post detailing several Twitter-based customer service incidents. She makes a good point when she cautions: “While it’s nice to know that Twitter is available as a way of getting a company’s attention, all methods of customer service and support should be treated with the same consideration. By pouncing on the Twitter complaints while ignoring the emails, one has to wonder if the company is, in fact, more concerned with reputation than they are with service.”

So is this all this recent grumpy-tweet placation a fast moving trend that will fade once companies are inundated by daily mountains of 140-character text complaints? Will there be some Twitter equivalent of the auto-reply? …Your tweet is very important to us…

I like to know who’s behind a Twitter avatar. If a group or company maintains a Twitter account, and I follow that organization and tweet in their direction, I like to know who precisely is listening. It might seem like a small thing, especially when logging a customer service complaint. But I had an incident where I tweeted one person — at least I thought I did — in a group and someone else picked up the tweet and it got me in kind of a jam.

On the personal side of things, I’ve noticed that when people I follow change their avatar from something abstract to a picture of themselves (even a cartoon rendering, in some cases) their tweets instantly get more compelling.

And really, it doesn’t feel terribly social or networky if I’m following a logo as opposed to a real, live human being.

Then again, paint me a hypocrite — I have a Twitter account for LaunchPad Coworking, just in case. But I maintain this to hang onto the name and to have a spot if someone comes looking for the company. Day to day though, I tweet as me, not my company.

Susan Price, my marketing guru, tells me There is no wrong way to use Twitter. She’s right, of course. This is something I love about Susan — the way she can kindly call me on my own stubbornness. And maybe, once we’re open, I’ll be tweeting from LPC all the time. It’s cool to watch how others are using Twitter for branding — less personal than an individual presence but, for now anyway, a lot more personal than a billboard.

And I confess I’ve even tweeted my own questions for corporations more than once, and had answers magically manifest. I was wishing for the capability to do a certain something on Evernote. So I tweeted it out there. Minutes later I got a tweet back saying, “You can do that now, here’s how.” It was great and in that moment, I didn’t care who was behind it — man, monkey or machine. I was heard. It rocked.

Another time @NPRpolitics tweeted the super-delegate count of Obama and Clinton. Clinton was ahead by .5 delegates. .5? I replied with “how can someone have half a delegate?” 2 minutes later I got the response — “The 1/2 comes from Theresa Morelli who lives in Milan. She is counted in DEMS Abroad. They split their del votes.” I couldn’t have found that answer any faster via Google. Very cool.

But can it be sustained? Getting a tweet back ten minutes after a complaint or compliment or request is just not a scalable model. I know — I used to do customer support. There are real hands behind those fingers twittering back responses. The expectation of getting immediate service as Twitter gets bigger is unrealistic. What happens when companies’ 1000 followers jumps to 20,000 and then to 50,000?

But the upside of the current Twitter flutter of customer service is that this is an entryway for other companies to start participating in the conversation about how social networking is changing the face of marketing and customer service. And it’s a clear reminder: You better watch and listen — people are tweeting about you.

Meanwhile, over on the consumer side, I sure hope folks don’t get spoiled and develop a sense of entitlement over these fast return tweets. If they do, it won’t be long before the squeaky tweeter stops getting the oil.