Twitter for customer service: best practices and use cases

Twitter is a social network that became popular in its early days as a platform for users to share short messages quickly. However, in the last few years, it has become one of the most popular customer service channels for brands. Users from all over the world turn to this channel to process complaints and request support.

By adding Twitter as a new channel, companies can create automated conversational journeys with customers on this popular social network and messaging tool. 

Automating Twitter allows businesses to provide faster and more efficient customer service while also delivering the personalized experiences that customers crave. By automating Twitter, businesses can unlock a number of benefits such as increased efficiency, better customer insights, and improved customer satisfaction rates. 

In this article we will discuss the best practices for automating Twitter for customer service purposes, target audiences and objectives of using Twitter, and highlight some of its key advantages and use cases.

Why is Twitter useful for customer service? 

Twitter is a powerful tool for customer service, as it allows businesses to engage and interact with customers in real time. This social media gives customers the ability to quickly reach out to companies and get fast responses, which can significantly enhance their overall customer experience. 

Twitter also enables businesses to provide personalized experiences for their customers through targeted messages, real-time monitoring of conversations, and responding at scale. This helps build trust and loyalty between a brand and its customers, leading to better customer satisfaction. In fact, companies that use Twitter for customer service see a 19% lift in customer satisfaction.

Besides the convenience Twitter offers for customer service, it can also be a powerful marketing platform. Companies can use Twitter’s advanced analytics tools to track user interactions, identify trends, gain insights into customer preferences and behavior, gain competitive intelligence, as well as optimize campaigns for better results. With this platform’s expansive reach – more than 500 million tweets sent each day – businesses can quickly spread their message and engage with potential customers in markets around the world. 

Target audiences of Twitter

According to a 2021 study, the age group that uses Twitter the most is the 35-44 age group, with 28.4% of all users, followed by the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups. This means that it is more popular among millennials than among Generation Z.  

On the other hand, when it comes to location, according to a Statista study from January 2022, the USA is the country with the highest number of Twitter users. In Latin America, the country with the highest number of users is Brazil (4th place in the ranking), followed by Mexico (9th in the ranking). 

While Twitter's general audience is well-defined, the platform itself has a number of tools that allow businesses to reach a wide range of audiences. By using this platform's expansive network, and the ability to target specific users, businesses have the opportunity to reach a limitless number of potential customers. Twitter’s advanced targeting capabilities help businesses to target audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. 

Twitter: why automate customer service on this channel? 

Furthermore, Twitter is an excellent platform for businesses that want to offer self-service options for their customers. By implementing a chatbot powered by conversational AI, companies can provide 24/7 support services that are faster and more efficient than ever before. 

This is extremely important, considering that 64% of customers on Twitter say they would rather message a dedicated support handle than call a business. In fact, 75% of users tweet expecting a quick response, ideally within 15 minutes. With so many customer inquiries coming through this channel, it becomes essential for brands to implement a scalable, immediate and efficient tool to automate and solve issues in real time without an agent.

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Automating Twitter also ensures that users have access to the same information regardless of when they contact the business; this boosts customer satisfaction while reducing the cost associated with manual customer service tasks such as answering frequently asked questions or making basic inquiries. 

Overall, Twitter has become an indispensable tool when it comes to offering efficient customer service. With its expansive reach and wide range of features, Twitter provides businesses with an unparalleled opportunity to connect with their customers in real-time at scale while offering personalized experiences that drive loyalty and trust between brands and customers alike.

The goal: instant responses, happy customers

By now you already know that Twitter is an essential customer service channel. Now, let’s take a look at how automating this channel can help you improve your CX strategy:

Reduce response time and save resources

According to HubSpot, 82% of consumers consider “important” or “very important” instant responses, so being able to respond in real-time is key. 

Businesses can use Twitter automation to streamline their customer service processes and provide greater efficiency in responding to inquiries. Automation allows companies to quickly respond to queries while freeing up vital resources that would normally be spent on manual tasks such as answering frequent questions or dealing with simple inquiries.

Improve customer loyalty by providing personalized experiences 

Automating Twitter can help increase brand loyalty and trust among customers by providing consistent experiences regardless of when customers contact the company. Twitter provides businesses with the ability to interact with customers in real time and connect directly with their target audiences on a large scale—making it an invaluable customer service tool. 

Optimize Twitter campaigns for better results across global markets 

Automating Twitter can help businesses optimize their campaigns for better results across global markets. With Twitter’s expansive reach and its ability to target users based on various criteria such as interests or location, businesses are able to reach more potential customers than ever before while ensuring that they are provided with tailored experiences that meet their individual needs. 

Maximize engagement and reach a larger audience 

Twitter bots can be designed to reach specific audiences based on demographic data like age or location, allowing businesses to tailor content according to their target audience’s needs. With its advanced analytics tools and tailored experiences targeted towards specific audiences, Twitter automation is a powerful tool to increase customer engagement with the company. 

Expand its omnichannel approach

Twitter is an essential omnichannel tool for businesses looking to provide efficient customer service and reach a wide range of audiences. Twitter's expansive network, advanced targeting capabilities, and versatile features make it the perfect platform for providing tailored experiences and engaging with customers instantaneously. Leveraging Twitter’s expansive reach and advanced analytics tools also equips businesses with powerful insights into global markets and help them optimize campaigns for better results.

Automated conversational journeys for Twitter 

As we mentioned above, automating Twitter for customer service is a great way to streamline the customer experience and provide more efficient support. Twitter's versatility and ease of use make it an ideal platform for businesses looking to automate their customer service processes. 

But automating this channel doesn’t come down to just implementing a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions. A successful automation strategy is about solving customers’ issues immediately. At Aivo, we like to talk about automated conversational journeys that lead the customer to exactly what they are looking for. 

Related article: What are automated conversational journeys?

But what are automated conversational journeys exactly? To better understand this, let’s take a look at some of the best practices to automate Twitter.

Establish Natural Conversations with AI

The first step when implementing a chatbot is to make sure it is powered by conversational AI. This technology will allow the company to interact in a natural, unstructured way without actually sounding like a bot. This means the bot will understand regionalisms, emojis, audio messages, and more, while it will also respond in a human-like way. 

Conversational AI also allows companies to enrich conversations with images, carousels, videos, webviews, quick reply buttons and forms. 

Solve customer issues in the first interaction

As we mentioned before, a chatbot that doesn’t solve is of no use. When customers contact a brand with an issue through a specific channel, they don’t want to be transferred to another channel. They don’t want to wait hours for an agent just to get a simple response. They want solutions to their problem in the first interaction. The sooner they find a solution, the happier they will be. 

Some customer inquiries require transactional information, such as:

• “What’s my account balance?”
• “When will my order arrive?”
• “I want to activate my account”

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To answer these questions through a chatbot or conversational platform, it is necessary to integrate it with the company’s tech stack, such as a banking system or e-commerce. This will allow the chatbot to identify each user, validate their identity, and provide transactional information that would answer questions such as the ones mentioned above. 

Some integrations can be complex, so the best advice is to have a conversational platform that can easily integrate with other technologies. For instance, Studio is Aivo’s low-code integration builder that allows companies to create limitless integrations for more efficient and more powerful customer conversations.

Know your customers’ needs and preferences (and keep learning about them!) 

To be able to solve your customer’s issues on the first interaction, it is necessary to get ahead of them and find out what their inquiries might be.

This means researching their needs, preferences, expectations, and potential questions or issues they might encounter. But it also means keeping track of your support on Twitter to gather valuable insights from customers. 

For instance, you should regularly check the questions that are being unanswered to train your conversational platform to do so. It also means collecting feedback from your users to keep improving the service, always putting the customer at the center of your strategy.

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Related article: Best practices for setting up a chatbot with conversational AI

Main Benefits of Automating Twitter 

Twitter automation is invaluable for businesses looking to provide efficient customer service, increase brand loyalty and trust among customers, and optimize campaigns across global markets. Twitter's expansive network, advanced targeting capabilities, and versatile features make it the perfect platform for providing tailored experiences while engaging with customers in real time. By leveraging analytics tools and automated conversation journeys powered by AI technology, businesses can enjoy a range of benefits that help them reach their target audiences on a large scale—making Twitter automation an essential omnichannel tool for any modern business.

Automating Twitter provides businesses with numerous benefits, such as: 

• Streamlined customer service processes that can be automated with AI bots or conversation journeys.  
• Quick response to customer inquiries regardless of when they contact your business. 
• Opportunities to target specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, etc. 
• Increased efficiency in dealing with customer feedback and support requests quickly and accurately.  
• Improved customer satisfaction due to faster response times.
• Reduce costs by streamlining customer service processes.
• Improve brand loyalty and trust among customers. 
• Optimize campaigns for better results across the globe.
• Allows businesses to implement an omnichannel strategy.

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Related article: Advantages and disadvantages of Chatbots: everything you need to know

Use cases of Twitter

As you can see, Twitter is one of the best platforms a company can use for customer service. But how can it be implemented? You can find use cases and examples from different industries and business areas. 

Financial/Telco: 

• Resolution of frequent queries, mainly of an informative nature. 
• Attention to complaints: creation of support tickets in the event of a rejected card, or an internet or telephone service down/downgraded. 
• Support for new sales opportunities in the event of queries about products or services (plans, cards, upgrades) through a form. 

Customer service for e-commerce

• Resolving frequent queries about products or services: discovering the best deals on a product, for example. 
• Support: Tracking orders and solving problems related to them.
• Generating new sales opportunities: offering quotations for a service or product, attracting interested parties to a product or service through a form.   

These are just some examples of how you can use Twitter automation for customer service, but these aren't all the ways you can use it. It all depends on the needs of your business and the industry in which you operate. Twitter has a lot to offer as a platform for business, it's just a matter of continuing to learn how to get the most out of it.

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Start connecting with your customers through Twitter 

Twitter automation is an essential tool for a wide range of businesses and organizations not only because it helps them to provide a 24/7 support service but also because it increases customer loyalty and engagement with the company. With this platform, businesses can measure the performance of each campaign and reach a wide range of customers all around the world.

If you're ready to automate exceptional customer experiences through Twitter, book a demo and find out how Aivo's solutions can help your business today.