Accelerator provides a beginner's guide to the way Twitter is impacting relationships between business and the customers they serve. (www.acceleratorsolutions.com)

1. Twitter and Customer Service A beginner’s guide, July 2011

2. Agenda Introducing Twitter What is it? The different types of tweet Twitter and Customer Service Customer complaints Customer care Marketing Sentiment and analysis How can we improve our Twitter presence? Top Twitter tips Overcoming hurdles

3. Introducing Twitter

4. What is Twitter? Twitter is... An online communication medium (microblog, social network) A source of news and opinion A zeitgeist (snapshot / timeline of society) 140characters or less per ‘tweet’ 200million users (March 2011) $150m revenue (2010) $8bn market cap (March 2011)

5. How do I filter the information I want? Users choose which users to ‘follow’ – these could be friends, celebrities or organisations. Only their tweets show up in your timeline...

6. Most influential users in the UK Influence is measured by factors such as the number of followers, influence of those followers, number of re-tweets and many other variables. These are some of the UK’s most influential users... Sarah Brown – Campaigner Richard Bacon – Broadcaster Eddie Izzard - Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry – Broadcaster UmairHaque– Economist Source: PeerIndex, iPaper, 2011

7. The different types of Tweet

8. Links Types of Tweet Due to the restriction of using 140 characters or less, many tweets link to content on third-party websites...

9. Re-tweets (aka RT) Types of Tweet Users often pass on tweets they like to their own followers. Re-tweeting is similar to hitting ‘forward’ on an email...

10. #hashtags Types of Tweet Hashtags help to group together tweets of the same topic. For example #business... Events and TV shows also use hashtags. For example, Have I Got News For You uses the hashtag #HIGNFY...

11. @mentions Types of Tweet When referring to other Twitter users, it is possible to link to their profile by using their Twitter ID...

12. #ff (Follow Friday) Types of Tweet ‘Follow Friday’ is a concept in social networking where on a Friday, people makerecommendations about other interesting users to follow...

13. Twitter and Customer Service

14. MrsLRCooperlilyrosecooper anyone know who the CEO of BT is. i'dfind out myself but my internet connection is so bad I can't even google. such bad service, awful. Lily Allen versus BT Customer complaints Musician Lily Allen (now Lily Cooper) once famously tweeted her frustration with her BT internet connection. She has 2.9 million followers... BT soon noticed themselves getting mentioned a lot! SO f****** bad. Don't know how these thieving b******* can sleep at night. MrsLRCooperlilyrosecooper

15. BT’s response Customer care The legend goes that one of BT’s executives personally got in touch and rectified the situation! Now BT have their own Twitter profile allowing them to receive and respond to over 4,000 queries and complaints a month...!

16. Customers as advocates Sales and marketing (1) Happy customers, on the other hand, can promote you publicly and create a buzz around your product, event or brand. For example, many people tweeted around the time of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) Annual Conference...

17. Captive audience Sales and marketing (2) PR and marketing are expensive, so having a captive audience who are willing to receive information in a format which they can engage with is very valuable. Check out the audiences of some of these brands... 0.2m 0.3m 0.7m 0.1m 1.5m Dell claims to have sold over $1m of stock through 0.1m followers of its ‘Dell Outlet’ Twitter profile!

18. Viral campaigns Sales and marketing (3) Non-customers can also be engaged through humorous videos, or competitions that ‘go viral’. For example, Nissan held a competition asking people to Tweet about what they would trade for a Nissan LEAF...

19. Sentiment and analysis (1) It is possible to monitor how many times subjects are mentioned, and examine the reasons for these trends. This can provide realtime information for further research...

20. Sentiment and analysis (2) There are plenty of tools for analysing and visualising the data...!

21. How can you improve your Twitter presence?

22. Top Twitter tips Get your teams speaking the language Once your teams understand what Twitter is about, they can feel more involved and begin to suggest ways to use it effectively and help promote it widely Little and often! Brainstorm a ‘bank’ of ideas for Tweets based on what you are passionate about, what you find interesting, and what’s happening in the business in coming weeks. Tweet these steadily over time. Listen and engage Follow as many relevant users as possible, and engage with them whenever appropriate – question them, respond to their queries, congratulate their successes, re-tweet their interesting tweets Spread the successes Once you start to see activity, be sure to update your teams to use that momentum

23. Overcoming the hurdles “But it’s just a fad – nobody uses it anyway” Take time to understand and educate using relevant context from your business, and case studies of proven impact elsewhere. “We might say something wrong – and everyone will be watching!” Remember that customer service advisors interact with the public every day – they’re used to toeing the line between solving problems and protecting a company’s interests. “We don’t have the resource right now” Start small, but do start – just by listening. Maybe add ‘buzz monitoring’ to one customer advisor’s responsibilities first, then let them engage in a helpful way once they are confident. This way you can slowly build a business case. Source: (www.rlyl.com)