‘Twitter, Twitter, Twitter’. No doubt this is what is being said in most board meetings across the globe at present. With the power of social media becoming more and more evident, we are seeing companies trying their hardest to force services like Twitter and Facebook into the way they conduct business. Often, if not properly thought out, it can have the opposite effect that the company set out to achieve.
One recent case of this is Debenhams, where they have appointed 6 customer assistants to interact with customers, giving them information, helping them out…via Twitter! What? Surely this is one of the times when you want to interact with a real life person, no?
It also opened up the floor for conversations like the following, which made me chuckle.
To be fair to the @Debenhamsretail staff, they saw the funny side, but should every company have a social media strategy or should they be focusing on improving their customer service as a whole?