Santa Better Be Watching Twitter for Customer Complaints

Eric Groves
Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:05:00 +0000

As the holiday season reaches a crescendo, there's a natural tendency for Santa and his retail elves to want to take a break as soon as the calendar flips to December 26. But he and all of his retailer friends better stay alert and keep an eye on Twitter and other social media outlets looking for customer complaints and pleas for help with their new toys and services.

Parents dread putting together those new toys after Christmas and, even worse, having to wait on hold for an extended time looking for help when something goes wrong. Well in 2010, people are getting off the phone and turning to Twitter for help. Bigger companies such as Comcast (@comcastcares) and Zappos (@zappos) are well known for the way they handle support queries via Twitter. My company has a team (@ctcthelp) dedicated to support via Twitter.

Is your business paying attention to customer complaints coming in through Twitter and Facebook? While not quite mainstream, consumers are starting to expect a response when they complain about a company, product, service, or process online, particularly from larger corporations. If your business is not keeping a pulse on the Twitter support channel, it's missing out on an opportunity.

Small business owners would be wise to jump on the Twitter support bandwagon this holiday season to keep an eye out for any issues that crop up. Even if strapped for time, free tools such as NutshellMail or Hootsuite make it easy to monitor for mentions of a company's Twitter handle or related keywords without having to sit at a computer every second of the day.

If you see someone complaining, reply to them as soon as possible with an apology and offer to help where possible. While your initial reply is public, it's best to take the conversation offline to diagnose and fix the problem. This way, your Twitter stream is not littered with back and forth that is probably not of interest to your entire customer base.

While most people are venting when they complain on Twitter and may not expect a response from a small business, they're likely to be delighted when you do reach out and assuage their disappointment. That's an opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a happy one that's more willing to tout your business and customer service.