Thoughts on Twitter

I am beginning to use Twitter, along with several free services that augment it, for keeping up with topics that are trending in real-time related to my job. No matter where you turn, you seem to see, hear or read something about Twitter these days. Large corporations are taking advantage of search tools to monitor every mention of their company on Twitter and respond in real-time to those mentions, whether good or bad. Ostensibly, this has the effect of fostering a closer relationship with those customers and potentially reducing customer service costs down the road. A simpler explanation is that customers are reacting positively to this new real-time customer service model, as evidenced by Bloomberg’s report on Comcast’s rising customer satisfaction scores. (Could the hiring of 15,000 new customer service reps since 2007 or proactive network monitoring be the reason for the improvement, or is Twitter really responsible?)

I can understand why Twitter is perceived as a revolution for customer service, but I also understand very well how the traditional contact center is organized and managed. If you think about it, Twitter is fostering a reversal of the model for customer service that has been developing in the contact center space for more than a decade. Read the rest of this entry »