Best practices in social CRM on Twitter from the California DMV.

1. HotProspect.com
398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
hello@hotprospect.com
What You Can Learn About Social CRM From the
DMV
“God giveth, and the DMV taketh away.” – Miss Hellberg, License to Drive
Earlier this year I found myself with an expired driver’s license; it had actually
been expired for a few months by the time I realized it. Sometimes running a
startup gets in the way of the basics. So, I took an early morning trip to the San
Francisco DMV office, filled out my paperwork, waited in line, paid my fees, and
took a picture. I left with a temporary paper license and the promise that a brand
new and valid CDL would arrive in the mail within the next few weeks.
Fast-forward four months and my wife asked me if I had ever received my
license. I realized that I hadn’t, and even worse, my temporary license had been
expired for about two months.
I called the DMV and was told that there had been a “glitch”. ”Don’t worry,” said
the operator, “this happens all the time”. Frustrated by their failure to convey vital
information, I turned to Twitter and saw that the California DMV had a verified
account which looked pretty active so, I sent this Tweet:
@CA_DMV requested CDL 4 mos ago. Was just told there was a system glitch & was
never issued. Won't receive for wks. Any way to expedite?
And voila, three minutes later something totally unexpected happened, they
Tweeted me back.
@JoeF We would like to help. Please follow DMV & DM us your name, DL number &
phone number so we can contact you.ow.ly/432m7
I followed the account back and DM’d all the details they had requested.
No less than 10 mins later a call with a Sacramento area code came through. It
was the DMV! The rep let me know that she had found my account, cleared up
the issue, and would be in touch before the end of the day for with a new ETA for
my license. She came across as informed, empowered, and totally
pleasant. Then, as promised, I got a follow up call letting me know that the
issues had been cleared up and that my license was en route. Awesome!

2. HotProspect.com
398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
hello@hotprospect.com
The California DMV is not known for its stellar customer support, so to have this
awesomely efficient experience through Twitter completely blew me away. This
was the best customer support experience I’ve ever had relative to my
expectations.
From my perspective, the DMV did several things right. First, they were
discoverable and active on Twitter. The California DMV account was verified and
had several Tweets and @replies per day in it’s timeline. This gave me hope
that the Twitter account could be a viable customer support channel.
Second, they were listening. A three minute response time on a support inquiry
through a social channel is astonishing, regardless of who you are. But a
response time of that speed from a government agency that traditionally has not
been associated with world class customer support, had my head
spinning. Clearly, there is some infrastructure in place for dealing with customers
on Twitter, which is great to see.
Third, they empowered employees to take action. I wasn’t shuffled around to
multiple points of contact or pushed to an alternate channel. The response came
quickly and proactively from a single employee who was qualified to guide me
through, until my issue was resolved.
As illustrated above, if your business is going to have a presence in social media,
then you must expect support inquiries. Having a standard process for dealing
with support requests is critical to both maintaining positive relationships with
your users, and keeping your business processes as efficient as possible. In
words that I never thought I would say: Be more like the DMV!
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