3 New Twitter Customer Service Features Your Business Needs to Enable

While Facebook has taken big strides in pushing Messenger as a customer service tool on social media, Twitter has always been a much more renowned destination for customers who want to vent in public. Now, it's stepping up its game on this front by introducing three new tools to help business' handle customer service queries more smoothly.
As per the official Twitter blog:

"These features are designed to help businesses create rich, responsive, full-service experiences that directly advance the work of customer service teams and open up new possibilities for how people engage with businesses on Twitter." 

In the blog post, I'll run you through everything you need to know to beef up your customer service game on Twitter.  To set up these new features, you'll need to enable them from the Customer Support menu of your Twitter Dashboard which is accessible here.

1. Show people your account provides support

When you check this box, the phrase "Provides support" will appear next to your Twitter name in search and compose suggestions. A message button will also be added to your profile. This option is particularly useful if your brand has multiple accounts - one for marketing and another specifically for support, for example - as a way to direct customers where to get help quickest.

2. Add your support hours

In the past, brands would typically include their available hours of support within their main bio text. Now, you can let people know the best time to tweet or DM you with a dedicated line at the top of your profile.
Tap the "Support hours" button in Settings and enter the hours and days that best suit your business. And don't forget to select your time zone from the drop-down box.

3. Add a Welcome Message

When you add a welcome message, it will appear automatically when people DM you from your profile. A welcome message can be used as a quick way to greet customers and outline how you can help.

Note: In the Evernote example (the first one in the image set above), you'll see that they ask people to select a reason for getting in touch or to enter a specific command - these are Quick Replies. Choosing an option or entering a command will prompt another automatic message to appear, usually asking for more information so that when a customer service representative is ready to handle the query, they have as much useful information to hand as possible. Quick Replies are currently only available to a select group of brands and developers.

Over to you

What do you think of Twitter's new customer service tools? Will you be adding them to your profile? Let us know in the comments below.