Chatbots, roll out
Ever felt yourself hankering for a pizza but didn’t want to stop scrolling through twitter and call Pizza hut? Maybe you’re having issues with a big company and don’t want to call their 800 number?
Talking to people is hard, and twitter gets it – that’s why they’re rolling out a new series of custom direct messaging bots tailored to each brand.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Pizza Hut, Evernote set up Twitter’s new DM chatbots, but it’s not quite working well yet…” quote=”So far Pizza Hut and Evernote are set up with bots, but to order a pizza you need to sign in to your account on the Pizza Hut website, and at the time of this writing, a test of Evernote’s bot proved unsuccessful. “]
Other companies rolling out their own twitter DM bots include AirBnB, Spotify, and Norton.
The virtual storefront experience
With just some simple automation, companies can now provide speedy and consumer friendly customer service. It’s easier to come to the consumer on their turf, rather than making them search through the company’s website or automated phone system for answers to their most basic problems. Even if their most basic problem is a need for pizza and extreme laziness.
“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.” Twitter details on their blog explaining the new features.
As soon as you decide to contact Pizza Hut directly through twitter, a message appears prompting you to interact with their bot-controlled system. Companies can customize user experience through twitter from the get go.
A virtual “Hello and welcome to our store, what brings you in today?” can provide the sort of customized virtual storefront on the platform where users actually experience their brand.
But it’s not just for businesses!
In fact, anyone with a Twitter account that accepts Direct Messages from anyone and has selected the option that they provide support (both options under customer support on your dashboard) can write a message that will pop up whenever anyone starts a conversation. That’s right, even you, Joe Shmo, can now address your Twitter followers with a personal greeting when they try to contact you.
Like many automated customer service systems, more extensive issues will be vetted by the bot, collecting pertinent information from the customer before sending the log to a human agent who can take the problem solving from there. The beta version of this bot app is open to developers who apply to Twitter for access, giving each company the opportunity to customize and control the bot’s process.
In a world where we air most of our grievances and triumphs on social media, and consumers require our beloved companies to do the same, it seems only natural that our basic customer interactions be facilitated through Twitter. I mean, our eyes are already glued to the little blue bird. Why rip them away?
