Support Problem? Twitter to the Rescue
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I was setting up a client a couple of weeks ago on a new Miva Merchant ecommerce store when my team started having problems with the payment gateway, a component that allows the store to process credit cards online. Our troubles started a few days before we were scheduled to begin accepting orders, and it ended up delaying the project about 2 weeks. I spent a number of hours researching the problem on my own, and even more trying to relay messages between the developers at Miva Merchant and InternetSecure, the payment gateway company.
By a certain point, both the customer and I felt like we were spinning our wheels, and I was just a conduit for messages between Miva and InternetSecure. My role had been reduced to that of a messenger. For whatever reason, we could not get everyone on the phone at the same time to resolve this problem, and my customer and I finally decided to begin setting up another payment gateway, at least until Miva and InterneSecure could work out their issues.
Like a Little Bird in a Nest, I tweeted for Help
I don’t know why I did it, but just as I was setting up a new gateway, I decided to tweet about my problems with Miva and InternetSecure:
Having a tough time integrating #InternetSecure payment gateway with #Miva. Anyone with any experience doing this?
I didn’t expect much from this post, and after putting it up on Twitter I pretty much forgot about it and went about my business for the next couple of hours. To my surprise, when I next checked Twitter, I’d received a response to my query from @Miva_Merchant. The name on the account was Rick Wilson, who is an Executive Vice President at Miva.
Executive VP? Helping me? Now that’s service.
I was also contacted by someone from InternetSecure on their personal account. That interaction, I suspect, prompted them to set up a Twitter account, @ElavonIS explicitly for their business, specifically aimed at this kind of interaction.
Over the course of the next couple of days:
- We were provided with a solution from InternetSecure that worked with our site.
- I managed to introduce the folks at InternetSecure to Rick Wilson.
- InternetSecure and Miva are now at least talking about ways they can better integrate their services.
It was pretty neat to see the situation play out, but more importantly, it was a valuable lesson in how Twitter can be a new conduit for communication when other forms are so difficult to come by.
Hashing It Out
Key to the post I had made were the hash (#) tags I had placed before the important words in my post. Hash tags are Twitter’s “unofficial” way of identifying keywords in posts, and allowing users to search posts related to those keywords. So if you were looking for information on the president, you would do a search on search.twitter.com for #obama.
Hash tags also have the advantage of allowing people who don’t follow your posts to find you based on those hash tags. In my case, neither Miva Merchant nor Internet Secure follow my profile, but because they were monitoring those hash tags, they were able to respond immediately to what I needed.
Hash tags aren’t perfect, and there are no rules quite yet on how to use them, just accepted practices. Some of the common ones I’ve seen so far:
- #fail – Used in posts to express frustration. For example, “My web site is so slow today, and the hosting service provider has terrible support! #fail”
- #jobs – Obviously, used to post job openings on twitter.
- #quote – If you’re quoting a famous saying, or something you’d like to be famous, you’d use this tag.
- #ff, #followfriday - The Twitter culture has something called “follow Friday,” in which Twitter users tweet about people they follow. It’s a way to promote people you know to others in your network, usually because they provide some value when they tweet, be it comedic, informational, or otherwise. It’s also a perfect example of why hash tags are imperfect — #ff and #followfriday both mean the same thing, but you’d have to search them separately to get all the Follow Friday related posts.
There are a host of other hash tags out there. To see some of the more popular ones and even track trends in this area, go to Hashtags.org. And remember, because hash tags have no rules at the moment, you can always make one up, as my friend Sam Howat did to express when he was having a great day.
Why it Worked
Unlike traditional modes of communication, where I had to actively go out, find my contacts, and initiate a conversation, Twitter allowed me to create a situation in which I could put out a general request for help, and people with the experience I needed could opt in and choose to help me. Rick Wilson has no idea who I am, but framing myself as a customer in need of help contextualized our relationship before he even initiated contact with me, and he was able to provide resources that I needed that weren’t easily found elsewhere.
So…are people talking about your business on Twitter? You bet. But you have the ability to be an active participant in that conversation and become a better resource to your customers. Twitter certainly isn’t the end-all for communication within your community of customers, but it’s another resource they are relying on more and more, regardless of whether you’re there.
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[...] Tweet – All other social media outlets are good for announcements, but the nature of Twitter allows you instant access to bunches of people that could be interested in your product, and doing it about once a day (maybe twice) won’t be too obnoxious. Be sure to use or create hash (#) tags that relate to your product so that people can find it more easily (I briefly touch upon hash tags in “Support Problem? Twitter to the Rescue“). [...]