I am actually very curious at this point to see where twitter will go in the future with versions and functions before committing to it full time. We all know it has flaws, but if they are fixed they could be riding the wave for a long time. If not, or not fixed on time, I will be curious to see what happens.

Thanks
Esteban

Twitter is a good place for IVR systems, both for customer service and marketing. I think Wim was accurate when mentioning that, at scale the customer experience will require automation. I don’t agree with Wim that once the automation is in place Twitter as a channel won’t have advantages over other channels. The light-weight experience is my first choice for “most” customer service and as tools are developed to enhance that experience this sentiment will grow. Yes, we build those tools.

Brands won’t have the option of just listening. As Esteban keeps pointing out marketing should be the primary focus for most brands on Twitter. It won’t be well received to market without listening over a channel that is two-way.

Dave

Interesting point. Makes me think (which will continue after this reply is done). I always said that Twitter is best used for ears and mouth (listen to feedback, market your content and value to your community). I never thought of it as an announcement tool overall for — well, everything. There are a couple of recorded events where (Stanley cup playoffs, an outage on a cable TV provider was known via twitter and word spread before other channels were even notified) this has happened, but I cannot recall or know of any time when the organization actually used it in that manner. I know there is some investigation going on as far as using it as a reverse-911 by local governments (instead of calling everyone by phone, one-by-one, use Twitter to reach out to people).

I am somewhat concerned by the real-time nature and lack of ‘importance’ that the channel provides (in other words, you either get it when it is announced, or you miss if). Sure, it can be repeated constantly, but the people who heard it once may disengage and miss the rest of the updates.

In any case, you bring an interesting point and I will think about it… thanks for that!

(and thanks for the read, and RT)

Exactly. It is not about losing focus of the end-results (providing the answer) but rather focus on the means (better channels, better integration) to get there.

I just have one question for you: how do you ensure that all channels deliver the same experience at the end? Do you focus on all channels regardless or the best channel for each transaction? How do you make those decisions and implement those experiences?

That is what I think is missing in Twitter, and that is what I’d love to hear from the people reading / commenting here. How to make it happen?

My POV on Twitter is that today does not have what it needs, and tomorrow it may — or Twitter2.0 may (whatever that product ends up being). It is up to us to point the direction based on our experiences in other channels, other situations, and to blaze the trail on the best way to do this in customer service. I honestly believe that if we do that we can shorten the transit through the trough of dissillusionment (Gartner’s Hype Cycle) and the fasten the slow climb up the slope of enlightment. That is the purpsoe of this conversation, IMHO.

If the people who read / participate in this community are the ones who are going to move Twitter adoption forward (and I do believe we are), then we have to be focused on what we need to do. We know, at least I hope we do, what Twitter is good for and how to do it well (at least for where we are in time with Twitter) and what is missing. That is the best way to move forward: either fill-in what’s missing or avoid the traps and focus on delivering value with what we can today.

Tomorrow is different and someone else will probably bring about the solution… I am just one more cog in the community doing what i can to advance SCRM.

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your contribution from the side of CEA — always an interesting perspective.

You bring an excellent point which I had advocated for in the past, but not yet in the Twitter world – cross-channel measurement and analysis. This is, in my opinion, the last frontier for multi-channel. Integrating biz rules or KM across channels is doable, not easy – but doable. So far, measuring channel-hopping customers or transactions that cross channels is not easy to do – actually, make that not done. I got so tired of being asked this question and have no answer while I was at Gartner that I ended up telling my customers to go ask their vendors why they were not giving them (and us) any information on it. It was not a welcome answer, but the only I could give at the time. My customers thought I did not know the answer, but the true is that still today (for the most part) ther eis no answer — or the answer is not what customers want (one vendor that does it all in 2-3 months and works forever without changes).

A key concept in feedback management is that if you don’t do it well, as in following each interaction mostly, by the time you capture the feedback is probably too late to act. How many times a customer said ‘oh, now you care?” when we reach out to them?

But I digress, I can talk about that forever back to Twitter. I cannot wait to see the developments and as I said above: I think that the key to using Twitter is going to be avoiding the problems and errors we made before – and that was the spirit of this blog.

Thanks for bringing a new dimension to the discussion.