Twitter to improve customer service through DMs

Turmoil struck Twitter is rolling out a new service to boost interaction between businesses and consumers on their platform through Direct Messages.

Taking a cue from Facebook Messenger’s immensely successful Chatbots, Twitter has developed a friendly bot for businesses that can send Welcome Messages and Quick Replies. Now the Welcome Messages are a Twitter exclusive, as it greets the user first, after you open a chat window with the bot.

Crossing the threshold of chat bots after Facebook, Twitter may have developed Welcome Messages keeping in mind it may get slightly awkward for users to initiate conversation with a bot.

Get faster and easier help from businesses. Try it now with @EvernoteHelps and @PizzaHut. #CarpeDM pic.twitter.com/T8vHnLESEM

— Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) November 1, 2016

Quick Replies is fairly similar in principle and execution to what Messenger ChatBots offer, but could help Twitter gain some ground in terms of being business friendly. Additionally, the two could coexist in this category, as Facebook’s competitive onslaught is much more focused towards Snapchat.

“When quick replies and welcome messages are used together, businesses can reduce wait times and educate people on the best ways to interact with them. For example, they can enable faster resolutions by helping customers more easily provide information to solve problems before an agent sees the first message, or they can simplify automated services and transactional flows that were difficult in the past.” says Ian Cairns, Customer Service Product Manager, Twitter, in the company’s official blog post about the announcement.

Twitter is working together with Evernote and Pizza Hut for the initial product roll out, at which representatives of both brands appear enthusiastic about the new customer service tools.

Gerald Hastie, Director of Global Customer Service, Evernote says, "At Evernote, it is very important to us that we provide the best possible experience across our channels. We are excited about the new features Twitter has developed. The ability to welcome our valued customers and capture their issues before they contact one of our agents helps to streamline the process, accelerate resolution time and reduce customer effort.”

The company claims it has worked with Assist, Audiense, Conversable, Conversocial, Dexter, Hobbynote,Lithium, Massively, Proxima, RozieAI, Spredfast, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social to bring these features to market.

Launching today , if you wish to check out the newest presentation from Twitter, it is being rolled out for the following brands; @EvernoteHelps, @PizzaHut, @AirbnbHelp, @SpotifyCares, @NortonSupport, @Tesco,@TfLTravelAlerts, @WeatherNetwork, and @AirTailor.

If you offer customer service for your business through Twitter, you can set up a default welcome message by visiting the support settings page on the Twitter Dashboard to greet your consumers. The service is currently in the beta phase.