In the blink of an eye, the playing field has changed for many companies around the world thanks to technology which is now available, most notably Twitter. In a matter of seconds, a negative expression of dissatisfaction can cross the wires and influence hundreds of thousands, if not millions of consumers minds and this has seriously caused pandemonium and even some confusion to companies world-wide - and for good reason.

Although many companies have had no choice but to embrace the movement and took the plunge to engage the community, there still remains many “holes” about how a company can use the technology to better serve their customers, or what for that matter the rules of engagement actually are and how a little “tweet” can reduce customer defection, or at least prevent it.

The Myth - Demystified

Twitter is about an individuals personal expression or “voice”

Contrary to any nay-sayers belief, an organization CAN in fact prevent customer defection or learn from their customer base by leveraging Twitter as a TOOL in their Customer Satisfaction toolbox.   Managing a corporate Twitter account isn’t the be all and end all in Customer Satisfaction prevention, it’s merely a complimentary process in the grand scheme of things.

This new “voice” of the customer travels much faster than any other form of medium available today, which a company can leverage in their quest to retain customers.  The intent of using Twitter to prevent defection is to catch the small sparks of dissatisfaction the moment they occur and stamp them out, by engaging the user almost as fast as they put the word out by handling, or at a minimum addressing the issue.

As an Organization you need some proof right?

Scan the internet and you will easily find musings & rants posted by some some of the most influential people in Social Media.  Danny Brown President of SocialMediaPR recently posted his thoughts through his twitter community pointing to his popular blog post “Remember When Customer Service Actually Meant Service?” and capped off the post with a razor sharp opinion: “Business is tough enough as it is. We all want to attract new clients and build our brand, but we can’t afford to do so at the expense of our existing customers. They’re the soul of any company and the ones that can offer you the best kind of new client attraction - word-of-mouth advertising” It’s THIS word of mouth which is traveling at near real time speeds that now needs to be managed effectively.

The Proof Is In The Putting

The ever popular Frank Eliason of Comcast, working under the name of @comcastcares on Twitter has recently been garnering world wide media acclaim on how proactive Comcast is for scanning any expressions of dissatisfaction on Twitter.  As you can see below his community is regularly speaking out and thanking him for the amazing service he and Comcast are providing due largely in part to how fast he engages and address customer issues.  I’m quite positive as large of an organization Comcast is they certainly utilize more advanced loyalty measurement tools such as the one’s our company Vital Insight Group provides, however it’s this proactive amount of handling customer issues that is likely seeing them trend higher in customer satisfaction as a company year over year.

Beyond traditional forms of customer satisfaction handling, Twitter has become a springboard of sorts to the emergence of new digital based roles & responsibilities for companies around the world.  Ford Motor Company recently handled the scrutiny of it’s past few months in the media with class and immediacy via community engagement by Scott Monty (@scottmonty) Ford’s Head of Social Media.   I’d wager a safe bet that thanks to Scott’s popularity and how well his on line identity has emerged on behalf of Ford Motor Company it paved the way for @fordcustservice to appear.  Like Frank at Comcast they too are now handling customer expressions and commentary in near real time, a first in the Automotive vertical where many of my company’s clients reside and are doing many courses on social media customer service to the industry.

The Skinny?

Twitter isn’t going anywhere.  It’s quickly transforming the corporate world and evolving the positions of people who manage their brands and their customers.  Words, feelings and expressions are traveling at the speed of keystrokes and the companies who embrace electronic forms of maintaining and engaging customers will gobble up market share faster than one thinks, the only question is: will your company reach out for help to understand and be among the ones to react or will you be the swallow”ee”?