How to Spy on Your Customers

We all want to, right? We’re hoping that there’s a nice polite way to do it. Maybe they’ll tell us what we want to know via a feedback form, or write us a lovely letter saying “hey, you, I’m angry about this thing.” Some of them do. They are an eensy beensy minority. We can’t turn them back to the light if they’re really angry. Sometimes we get lovely letters of the other type - the ones who love what it is that we do. Those are good days, the days we receive those letters.

But really, at the end of the day, we don’t learn from the letter writers. Not as much as we learn from folks who, whether they realize it or not, are our use cases, our micro-evangelists, people that we want to know better. Those people don’t talk to us. But they talk to their friends. And sometimes they just shout to the universe (no matter how large or small their universe happens to be).

Dell started it - monitoring the social media stream for mentions of themselves, swooping in to offer support or guidance. In effect, it was a running stream of service recovery opportunities. The possibilities were endless, and the barrier to entry was low.

But they had people, you know what I mean? They had a fleet of customer service professionals already. It was just another channel. Surely we can’t replicate that kind of attention. Well, maybe we can’t. But the tools that we have now are so much better. I don’t mean for this to be a puff piece about either service I’m going to talk about, and since it’s a hot topic, I can say that neither EASCI nor myself are being compensated for this post. The simple fact is that if you want to navigate the Twitterverse, there are no better companions.

 TweetDeck

I don’t know many people who are serious about Twitter, full stop. But those who are serious about it use TweetDeck. Tweet Deck runs on the Adobe AIR runtime, a free and system-independent software development platform from the people who brought you the PDF. That means that anybody can download and install TweetDeck at no cost. It’s a fantastic program, that gives you a ton of options. You can configure the program to search for your company or product name, the names of your competitors, and anything else that strikes your fancy.

Every time a tweet containing one of your search terms hits the transom, you will see it pop up in the appropriate column. Sometimes it will just be a quick “thank heavens for this company/product” sort of thing, and you can thank that user and encourage them to follow your official Twitter account. Sometimes, many times, people will be experiencing troubles, and you can reply to that user quickly and easily. Because Twitter is limited to 140 characters, many of these replies will be stock - you can link them to your customer care center or give them a number to call. You can offer them a link to a page that answers the question asked. The possibilities are endless but the message must be short. Nobody expects a full answer, but the fact that you’re directing them to the answer is great service. You too can be as awesome as Dell.

HootSuite

There are ramifications, albeit small ones, to installing and utilizing any sort of runtime environment on your computer, whether it’s Java, AIR, Silverlight, or what have you. However innocuous the app, there is always the risk that it will cause other programs to function poorly or not at all. And, of course, the most tightly locked-down workspaces might think TweetDeck is malware no matter what you do.

Fortunately, HootSuite just launched a new version of their browser-based Twitter toolkit, and boy is it fancy. Similar to TweetDeck in operation and essentials (saved searches, support for multiple accounts, etc.), it lives in your browser and doesn’t require the installation of any additional software. In addition to providing you a web-based solution, it adds a couple of features. First, it has a built-in link shortener that also counts the number of clicks and the sort of reception that a given link receives. From a marketing perspective, this gives you the opportunity to run messaging and campaign tests on Twitter. Try a coupon. Offer a discounted rate on something. Elicit feedback on a new product or service. These are all good things, whether you’re a Fortune 50 company or a taco stand. Second, HootSuite can create embeddable HTML codes for a particular search “channel,” giving you a quick and easy way to incorporate your presence on Twitter into your own website.

Both of these applications help you quickly make sense of Twitter, find current and potential customers, and grow your universe. Give them a spin - you won’t be disappointed.