Does twitter customer service scale?

I should start this by saying that I have used Charter ( @Umatter2Charter ) many times on twitter, and watched Comcast ( @comcastcares ) customer interactions. In addition I’ve been engaged with Frank (Comcast) in various Social Media discussions, and Erik (Charter) in various personal discussions as well.  In all cases they’ve been helpful, insightful, and in general just good experiences all the way around.  But from a customer service perspective, I simply don’t buy it in the long run.  My argument has always been that it simply does not scale effectively.   I don’t mean that it can’t scale like any other customer service contact point (phone, chat, etc.).  I mean that it will scale *exactly* like any other customer service contact point.  In other words, ending in a experience that is no better than what we have right now (which in general isn’t very good).

 

What makes getting customer service on twitter effective today (for those few companies doing it right) is that you are essentially getting “special attention”.  The ratio of of questions to answers is very low, the people providing the support are more experienced than most, have access to resources more than most, and are out to prove to the bosses that the decision to move onto twitter was a good thing….or in some cases that PR can get some mileage out of the fact they are there.  So basically you are getting VIP treatment.  Which begs the question, how do you scale the *experience* that exists today?  Do you really believe you can provide that same level of service if the volumes on twitter looked anything like call center volumes?  You could however do it just like you do online chat, which in turn means wait times and script reading flunkies on the other end who simply create a ticket for anything more difficult than “yes, I already tried turning it on and off”.  Who needs more of that? Who would want to answer inane questions in 140 character bursts?

 

I love twitter customer support at the moment precisely because I’m one of the few people using it.  It’s personalized by its very nature.  I know that Erik from Charter cares, that he is on top of his game, and gets results.  But that sentence says it all.  I know *Erik* cares, I know *Frank* cares.  The moment the volume is such that it’s just another nameless face behind the screen that represents a company vs. a person I’m right back where I was yesterday.  Unlike online chat however, the moment that customer service starts becoming a bad experience, the experience itself is viewable by millions of others.  The public twitter timeline *is* your chat log.  There is no place to hide.  A significant risk in my opinion unless you’ve somehow already come to grips with the huge budget increase required to try and maintain todays twitter customer service experiences tomorrow.

 

Matt Ridings - @techguerilla

Posted on Friday, Apr 2, 2010 by