Twitter Direct Message How to integrate Twitter DM via API or software, diffuse customer disputes and deliver exceptional service
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Contents Executive summary
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Fulfilling criteria to send Direct Messages on Twitter
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Typical use case for businesses using Twitter DM
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Making the most of Twitter DM
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Further use cases
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How to ensure your agents are offering the best customer experience via Twitter
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Choosing the right tool to support your Twitter DM strategy
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Executive summary There is no doubt that social media disrupted our lives in ways few experts could have ever predicted. But no social platform disrupted the world of business more immediately than Twitter. Twitter opened up a channel for consumers to communicate directly with businesses. Acting as the world’s forum to broadcast news, opinions and status updates, Twitter users quickly utilised the service as a means to grab companies’ attention. Whereas before, customer feedback was a private matter, scrawled on a comment card or survey, Twitter gave consumers a soapbox to give feedback in real-time. Twitter continues to increase its user base year-on-year and today boasts 335 million users, with an average of 5 million tweets sent per day. What’s more, its users aren’t just vocal, they’re often young, and financially well-off. 37% of users are aged between 18 and 29 years, and 25% are in the 30-49 bracket, with 56% of all earning $50,000 (USD) or more annually. Engaging with your customers and prospects through Twitter isn’t just essential for your brand and customer service, it can also yield huge profit. As the voice of your customers, providing real-time data that reflects their needs, desires and behaviours, Twitter has been historically used to generate huge insights that inform strategy on everything from branding, product lines, PR, sales, marketing, and customer experience. Innovative and forward-thinking companies with their fingers on the pulse have been successful at taking advantage of this in countless examples. TMobile, for instance, noticed a huge spike (37%) of negative sentiment towards their brand after a small change in their service model. Fortunately for them, CEO John Legere was highly active on the platform, and was able to be proactive in his handling, quickly correcting the problem and earning brownie points from consumers in the process who were happy to be heard. For a company less engaged with Twitter, this would have had a much different ending, no doubt resulting in huge loss of revenue from customers abandoning ship before the business could even figure out what went wrong. But perhaps Twitter’s most game-changing quality is how accessibly conversational it is. In the public sphere, the timeline is so instant and visible (especially via a distribution of retweeting, paid promotion and more recently, favouriting) that complaints to companies must be therefore dealt with quickly, even if it is just a holding response that takes users behind a private curtain of resolution. This is where Twitter Direct Messaging comes into play, and where it has changed B2C operations for good. 3
Fulfilling criteria to send Direct Messages on Twitter In addition to regional data regulations, there are some limitations to who you can and can’t directly message on Twitter. This is not unique to Twitter, nor it is limiting to most companies, who continue to discover endless use cases that fulfil the necessary criteria in order to thrive within these elastic confines. You simply just need to be aware that in order to message a user on Twitter DM, the user must fulfil one of the following:
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Following
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Have messaged you previously
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Have their settings set to accept direct messages from all
This also applies to your own Twitter business account. As a business, you should want to remain as accessible as possible to your clients, customers or prospects, which is why most company accounts opt for allowing all users to message them in their settings. Allowing more channels for conversation with your consumer base is always a good idea, after all.
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Are following your account
The typical use case for businesses using Twitter DM The most common use case for Twitter DM occurs when a user tweets the company’s Twitter handle. Customer service agents then publicly respond (so that other users can see the message is being dealt with), and ask the user to privately message them. Twitter has even developed a way for businesses to create a button in the body of their tweets which takes users straight to the inbox. Simply use the following link, inserting your profiles numerical ID at the end: https://twitter.com/messages/compose?recipient_id={insert numerical ID here} Once the user has messaged you privately, the company is able to message the user back using Twitter DM because they have fulfilled the second criteria. Because only one of the three criteria needs to be met in order to message a user, companies typically use this method in order to blanket fulfil the conditions for all cases. The reasons for not resolving the matter on the public timeline are multitude, but mostly because a private resolution both protects the brand, and the customer. Users still feel heard by being able to chat with an agent privately, but the complaint severity has been downgraded by taking it out of the public eye. At the same time, the customer’s data, which is most likely required in order to resolve the matter, is kept secure in the privacy of the direct message conversation. By swiftly responding in this way, you will make consumers view you as a proactive, modern company and your agents will also be empowered with the opportunity to switch a customer’s view a full 180 degrees, by taking a complaint, and ending the conversation with a huge thank you from the other side.
“One simple conversation and suddenly a moment of annoyance becomes a moment of delight as an issue is resolved in a public display of exceptional customer service.” Twitter, 2015 Once the matter has been resolved via Twitter DM, you already know the customer is a heavy Twitter user because they have taken to the channel to contact you initially. Chances are therefore good that they will then publicly tweet about the exceptional customer experience your agents have offered them. This is especially the case if your agents have achieved an in-channel resolution, where the phone or device is still in the user’s hand, thumbs itching to tweet some more, gifting you some great PR, all whilst strengthening ties of loyalty with existing consumers. 5
Making the most of Twitter DM According to data from Twitter in 2015, B2C companies are only responding to around 60% of tweets directed at their accounts. This is not only a massive missed opportunity with regards to the remaining 40% (agents can respond more quickly with Twitter DM, often at a cost that’s 80% less per interaction than by the phone), but it also gives your brand a chance to get ahead of the competition, and become known for your superior customer experience.
Why is customer experience so important? A great customer experience is not just something that is nice to have. Customers are less forgiving with brands than they used to be and almost two-thirds of those who have a poor experience reduce their spend as a direct result. At the same time, customer service is becoming increasingly difficult. The need to meet ever-increasing expectations with tailored one-to-one experience (and not just a glorified FAQ page, automated voice menus or a rather unhelpful help guide) is growing.
95% of consumers say they are influenced by what other people say about companies on social media.
To the average consumer, an unanswered tweet (whether the user is tagging the company with a handle or hashtag or not) is a display from a business that they would distance themselves from, even if they don’t know the tweet origin personally. But that same tweet, with a call-to-action to directly message the company for a resolution, followed by an additional status on how much they love the company is an instant endorsement. Amplify this by the millions of tweets that are sent to businesses every week, and you have a self-generating PR machine. You need to be plugged into Twitter for the simple fact that... People are talking about your brand. Wouldn’t you rather they talked to you? 6
Further use cases Low-cost, great customer experience By making Twitter DM your primary channel for customer service, you can deliver a low-cost yet exceptional customer experience. Businesses can encourage DMs with a button that takes customers straight to the inbox. Just be sure to turn the setting on that enables customers to message you without you following them. It’s also worth noting that you can even customise your Direct Message deep links or Direct Message buttons to provide users with an automated welcome message, perhaps immediately triaging by asking some qualifying questions. You can find out more about Twitter DM welcome messages here: business.twitter.com/en/help/connecting-withcustomers/direct-messages.html Rewarding customers Twitter DM is not just a channel for complaint. You can reward your most-vocal and mostcheery users who are praising a service or product from you by asking them to directly message in order for you to provide some kind of thanks or token reward, even if it’s just a branded tote bag. Not only does this provide the kind of amazing customer experience that they are likely to tweet about (gifting you some great PR), as soon as the recipient has DM’d you once, they have again fulfilled the 2nd criteria and are, according to Twitter’s rules, opted in to receive communication from you in Twitter DM subsequently. 7
Re-engaging customers Twitter DM can provide ample follow-up opportunity for users whose complaints you have already resolved on the channel. Consider entering these customers into a re-engagement program by offering discount as reconciliation or a survey following the service they had. Discounts will help to win back your customer’s loyalty and produce more revenue through additional sales. Surveys help fulfil the needs of customers to feel heard whilst also providing you with crucial data you can use to reconfigure your customer service strategy in order to survive in an ever-competitive market where customer experience is key to maintaining or achieving a competitive advantage.
Customer marketing You may want to ask a user’s permission to send marketing on Twitter DM in exactly the same way you would for an email address or text message. To fulfil both Twitter’s opt-in policy and protect the customer’s data preferences, you would require their Twitter handle, their freely-given consent, and you would also need to advise them to follow your account using this handle so you can send a direct message. This provides you with both a list of accounts who have opted in, and also more Twitter followers as an added bonus!
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How to ensure your agents are offering the best customer experience via Twitter Like many channels, Twitter DM is only as good as the team that runs it, and there are many things you can do to ensure your agents are offering the best experience for your customers as they perform as the voice of your company.
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All of your channels, conversations and interactions with your customers within your omnichannel strategy at any point are fantastic opportunities to be on-brand and perpetuate your reputation as a leading company in your field. Customers are engaging with companies on Twitter and brands are responding in innovative ways that help make a name for themselves.
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Hiring agents who offer exceptional customer experience, who provide “extra mile” service is something that to will help your brand grow.
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Your agents should be strong writers in order to minimise the chance of any misunderstandings, and to provide customers with useful advice and guidance. It may not be suitable to therefore simply pull agents from the call centre floor as the skill sets are not necessarily sufficiently overlapping.
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Many customers are unable to effectively communicate what their problem is. They often lack the knowledge to consider what resolution they require. Your agents therefore need to be able to both empathise with the customer to figure out the problems and also apply their specialist knowledge of the company and product or service offering in order to fix the customer’s complaint. Only having one of these skills is not enough. Because of the unique temporal element of Twitter, it is particularly well-known for viral trends that fade out as quickly as they become lit. Its audience are some of the most culturally relevant internet users who pride themselves on being tapped into the zeitgeist. Agents need to be culturally aware and recognise the abbreviations and colloquialism of the Twittersphere, and the language patterns that indicate tone, can all be very important to establish a mutual understanding between agent and customer. Of course, none of these items matter if your agents aren’t provided with the right tools in order to handle conversations on Twitter DM, or indeed the other channels they are most likely managing as part of an omnichannel strategy.
Choosing the right tool to support your Twitter strategy When choosing a channel provider for Twitter DM, it’s important you bear the following in mind. The right provider…
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should have ability to offer personalised experience to your customers. This is exceptionally important when you consider that 83% of customers with a personalised interaction were satisfied by their customer service experience on Twitter, and 77% were subsequently likely to recommend the brand to others. Of customers who sought service on Twitter in 2015, 83% were satisfied when they felt the experience was personalised, compared to only 20% who were satisfied when the experience was alternatively impersonal.
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will enable context across channels, so that any data in the form of customer information or even the conversation history itself, will be accessible to agents should the customer continue communication on another channel in the future. Likewise, your agents will be left in the lurch if a customer engages with a conversation on Twitter DM, having previously conversed on a channel such as Facebook Messenger, email, SMS or more. Your agents need a holistic view of the customer in order to provide efficient, relevant and personalised service.
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should be able to integrate into your CRM system through an API. Don’t forget what a treasure trove of information Twitter can also be. Agents could manually enter wealth of valuable data that customers are volunteering up from their public Twitters such as their job title, common problems or complaints with existing suppliers of products or services, what they like about particular businesses or brands and even their politics or family situation. For highly-targeted marketing, this is not just an effective tool, but an essential one.
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will enable your agents to ‘triage’ incoming messages, by prioritising, assigning and quickly responding. In 2013, 53% of users who asked a brand or product a question on Twitter expected a response within one hour. For complaints, that figure goes up to 72%. Analysing other recent trends in consumer expectation, no doubt this has since also risen dramatically.
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Twitter DM with Comapi Integrating Twitter DM to Contact In order to integrate to Twitter DM to Contact, you will need to access your API keys from Twitter, but don’t worry, this is much easier than it looks. It involves a few simple steps including applying for a developer account, and then choosing to share a few permissions. Integrating Twitter DM to Hub API users powering communications through Hub also require the same API keys from Twitter, but support is always on hand with this should you need any assistance. Integrate Twitter DM into your own system with the use of our innovative and powerful One API. Docs and support We will walk you through integrating to both Contact and Hub in our docs and we can provide additional support through our managed services team. Most users are up and running in a couple of hours. Once you’re plugged in, you’re ready to go!
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About Comapi Comapi are a leading omnichannel solutions provider, empowering businesses of any size to deliver holistic messaging experiences to their customers. Connect to Contact to start having the conversations immediately, or to Hub and integrate the most powerful omnichannel messaging API on the market (the One API) to your existing system, instantly unlocking your omnichannel potential. We are experienced With over 16 years’ experience in delivering superior customer experiences with business communications, we are home to some of the world’s most informed experts when it comes to A2P. We’re real people, with you every step of the way, from integration to implementation. With a proven track record of delivering exceptional experiences to over 10,000 customers, and millions of messages sent every month, we’re confident we can help you achieve omnichannel success. We are global Whether you want to send or receive one message, or millions, to one territory, or hundreds, with global access without ties to specific providers, we can intelligently route messages to the highest quality networks ensuring your messages are always received. We are resilient and secure At Comapi, we understand the importance of security and resilience to your business, which is why we pride ourselves on adopting not just cloud architecture, but multi-cloud architecture (Azure, and Google) to ensure our systems never go down. We take rigorous steps to ensure our services are secure by minimising surface attack areas, only communicating over 2048-bit TLS encryption to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks and snooping, as well as being ISO 27001 accredited, ensuring all aspects of our business are secure. We are ready for the future With the simplicity of our One API, you’ll only ever have to integrate once to access all of our current channel offerings, but also any future channels, such as RCS. If you’re already integrated with a single channel from us, all others will be available to you either as soon as you require them, or as soon as they are released. We even support custom body in your send so that as channels evolves, you’ll be able to instantly access any new features or message types.
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