Twitter debuts new customer-support features for brands

An internet fan browsing the net. Photo courtesy of Pexels.
By TECH CORRESPONDENT
newsdesk@reporter.co.ke
Social media users who are dissatisfied with customer support from brands often cite lack of response, and Twitter Thursday introduced two features to help businesses combat that perception.
Businesses on Twitter can now indicate that they provide support via the social network, and those that do so will enable “provides support” details that are displayed when users search for accounts, @mention them in tweets or communicate with them via direct messages, according to SocialTimes.
And businesses can choose to display their hours of availability, so Twitter users know when they are most likely to receive help.
According to SocialTimes, the direct message button will also be more prominent on those brands’ profiles.
Businesses can enable these new features starting Thursday via the new customer support settings page on the Twitter Dashboard site, with the first step being to enable direct messages from all users, and Twitter said users will start to see these new features in the Twitter application “as we expand our rollout over the next few weeks.”
Twitter product manager Travis Lull wrote in a blog post: We are committed to making Twitter the best place for people to talk to businesses.
These features build on previously released direct message links and customer feedback cards to help businesses do better service on Twitter. Those have both had great success.
On average, customer feedback requests receive a response more than 60 percent of the time. Many brands have told us that this is about five to 10 times the average response rate they get for other feedback surveys.
Early use has also shown that customers who are sent a direct message link follow through to actually send a message roughly 30 percent more often than those who are asked to direct message via text only.