Need to improve customer service? Stop talking and start Tweeting

Virgin Media Business customers who need to contact customer service now enjoy, on average, a 61 second response time. According to Martin Hofschroer, Virgin Media Business discovered that customer service levels differed greatly between banks as the quickest bank answered one call in just seven seconds while the slowest took five minutes and 33 seconds to reply to a call.

Research by the Institute of Customer Service revealed that almost a tenth of British people expect a business to have a presence on Twitter.

Do you see Twitter to be of value to you and your customer service team?

Learn more: Tweeting Rather than Talking Can Improve Customer Service

USAToday: Social media like Twitter change customer service

By now you've heard of companies in the United States harnessing the power of Twitter to fully connect with their customers. USAToday has a fascinating breakdown of the companies and what has and hasn't worked with Twitter and customer service.

Social media like Twitter change customer service

Is your company utilizing Twitter? What do you think you've learned from your customers? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

Is Twitter Part of Your Customer Service & Support Strategy?

Despite outages, Twitter can be a useful tool within the support strategy of your customer service department. Parature.com highlights a recent article Mashable writing, problem resolution - it’s the main goal of customer service and Twitter provides a platform for a fast, easy response possibly in a single tweet; positive brand image - when someone receives service they like, they talk about it and Twitter provides a viral platform to spread the word which can lead to more sales and more attention; staff involvement - Twitter provides a more interesting platform for support representatives to serve the customer and provides immediate visibility into the impact they make; cost reduction - what every support organization wants and with Twitter it’s necessary to be short and to the point reducing the time required to solve each problem.

If you're using Twitter, how can you take it a step further for a better integration between service and customer? We'd like to hear your thoughts.