Recently Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog conducted a survey on “How Online Marketing Blog readers use twitter?” The survey has 220 respondents which is a decent number and results are also pretty much in line with the expectations.
To read more about the survey and result, please visit Top 10 Uses of twitter and Tools.
One of the uses which Lee mentions in the last part of the post is “Customer Support and Customer Outreach“.
I would go a step ahead than Customer Support and Customer Outreach and would talk about Engaging customers with Twitter. Customer support is a product’s view of marketing where customers are seen as a burden and hence the word “support”.
Today businesses talk about customer centric marketing and believe in relationships. For maintaining relationships, it is important to engage customers rather than supporting them. But how does one engage customers?
Customers get engaged when they have an ecosystem where they have the freedom to not only provide feedback, express their concerns and complaints but also partner in designing better value proposition for them i.e. better products and services for themselves. The engaging ecosystem also provides a platform for businesses to offer their services in a fun manner which in this case is 140 words tweets. J And above all, it comes free.
To provide an example of engaging customers through twitter, assume an online internet based marketing club which offers its services to small and medium enterprises. Now being a small company itself, it can’t afford to invest much on marketing collaterals or feedback channels. Also since the industry is so dynamic, it becomes imperative for the company to partner the customers in designing value proposition rather them delivering them a product.
Keeping all these things in mind, what should the company do? How should it make sure that it engages its customers in the true sense?
It uses twitter as a platform for feedback where customers can complain, if they have any and then they are taken good care of (and not Support). The company also uses twitter to provide consulting to its customers as telephone sessions across the globe would cost much more. Community is built around twitter for people to interact, communicate and share. Above all, it provides a medium to the company to make their customers, partner in designing better value proposition in future. Customers could be reached directly and requested to provide invaluable insights on products before the actual launch.
Conclusion
Uses like customer support are product’s view of marketing and not good for any business. Today for businesses to thrive, it has become imperative for companies to talk about engaging customers rather than satisfying them or just meeting their needs. And Twitter provides a perfect platform to companies to do just that Engage Customers.
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