How to Create a Twitter Customer Care Strategy

The internet and social media have made processes easier and faster, but they’ve also reinforced our preference for instant gratification—and customer service is no different. 80% of consumers reach out to brands on social media when they have an issue and one-third of those customers expect a response in two hours or less.

This is why having a customer care strategy for social media is a huge help. And since Twitter is one of the best platforms for direct conversations, it’s become a popular haven for customer support channels.

Throughout this article, we’ll talk about why Twitter should be a part of your customer success strategy, how to create your own Twitter customer care strategy, and more.


How to Create a Twitter Customer Care Strategy:


Why Incorporate Twitter Into Your Customer Care Strategy

One of the biggest reasons you should incorporate Twitter into your overall customer care strategy is because that’s where customers want to go to talk to brands. According to Twitter itself, 80% of all social customer care inquiries start on Twitter.

Other reasons why Twitter is such a great tool for customer support include:

  • Conversations are public so other customers (and potential customers) can see how your brand handles customer service issues
  • You’re able to have conversations with your customers in real-time
  • Customers often head to Twitter to check the status of their favorite tools if they’re having issues, so you can use this as an outlet for outages and other announcements
  • You can easily search for your brand name to monitor conversations, respond to issues, and gather customer feedback
  • It’s imperative to be where your customers are—and your customers are likely on Twitter

If you don’t have a Twitter account, the time to create one was yesterday. Get started on Twitter, learn how to grow your following, and follow along with the rest of our guide to start incorporating this channel into your customer care strategy.


How to Create a Twitter Customer Care Strategy

Ready to create your own Twitter customer care strategy? Let’s walk through the steps you need to take to successfully monitor and manage customer complaints and issues on Twitter.

Customer Care Strategy For Twitter

1. Decide how to offer support.

First, decide how your team is going to offer support. Will you give a handful of people on your customer support team access to your main Twitter account? Will you dedicate someone on your social team to share customer service problems with support? Or will you create a dedicated support Twitter?

There’s no right answer—you just have to find what’s going to work best for the way your teams are set up. However, one common strategy we see (and you’ll learn more about this below when we share examples of brands using Twitter for customer service) is a dedicated support Twitter.

Once you know how you’ll offer support, you need to pinpoint who is going to be in charge of manning these accounts. It’s a good idea to create a dedicated social media support team who is trained in both social media management and customer service.

You can even have different shifts if you want to offer support 24/7. However, you can also set certain hours and simply share those hours in your Twitter bio so customers know when to expect a response from your team.

2. Set up social media monitoring tools.

Next, you’ll want to set up social media monitoring tools and alerts so you don’t miss any tweets mentioning your brand—even if they haven’t actively tagged you.

You can also use Twitter’s search functionality to regularly scour tweets for any brand mentions, but having the proper monitoring tools set up will make this task even easier and more efficient. 

Plus, some social media tools also incorporate management features, meaning your team can use these tools to house their support conversations and more effectively manage their Twitter notifications.

3. Create a list of responses.

After awhile, your team may find that they’re coming across some of the same questions again and again. And while every tweet your team sends should be personalized to fit the customer name and the way they asked the question, it may be efficient to create a list of responses that your team can refer to when responding to customer issues.

Make sure everyone on your social media support team has access to this document of responses and is properly trained on how to use it. They shouldn’t simply copy and paste the response—every support tweet should be personalized so the customer feels like they’re actually being heard.

4. Respond to tweets quickly.

One of the most important things to keep in mind with Twitter customer sevice is speed. Your customers want to hear from you within a timely manner—typically within 2-12 hours. This means your team needs to stay on top of monitoring conversations.

However, if your team is busy with other tasks or receiving an influx of customer requests, you can create an auto-responder that lets the customer know your team will get back to them as soon as they can.

You can set an automation like this up with Zapier. Set the trigger as someone tweeting @YourUsername then have the action be “Create tweet” and draft your tweet. It might be something basic like, “We’re currently experiencing a high volume of tweets. Bare with us and we will respond to  your inquiry via DM as soon as we can.”

5. Move conversations to DM for more in-depth help.

Starting the conversation via public tweet can be a great way to let all of your customers know that you respond to support requests in a timely fashion. However, if the issue is still occuring, you need more information, or the customer is visibly frustrated, that might mean it’s time to move the conversation to direct message—or escalate to a manager.

Simply ask the customer to private message you so that you can assist them further or ask them to send you specific information via DM so that you can look further into their issue. The rest of the support conversation should remain in your direct messages.

6. Escalate recurring issues.

If you see customers complaining of the same issue again and again, make sure to escalate it to development or another team. This may mean there are bugs that need to be fixed in order to ensure the issues don’t continue to happen.

7. Create a human touch.

Have your support team sign their tweets with their name or initials. This helps customers feel like they’re actually dealing with a human rather than a bot or a nameless social media account. Simply adding something like “- Chloe” or “- CW” to the end of a tweet is the perfect touch to humanize your support team.


6 Examples of Brands Using Twitter for Customer Service

Take a look at customer care on Twitter in action. These six brands have committed to offering customer support help on the platform.

Grammarly

Grammarly has their own dedicated support account on Twitter. They make it easy to find by tagging it right in their main Twitter bio. They have a clear CTA: “Need support? Reach out to @GrammarlyHelp.”

Grammarly customer service

From there, users in need of assistance can easily click over to reach the Grammarly help channel.

Grammarly customer support

On this Twitter account, they regularly share links to product updates, knowledge base articles, and similar helpful content, but they also have customer success managers monitor the account and respond to complaints from Grammarly users.

Here’s an example of someone tweeting directly to the Grammarly support Twitter account to share their feedback on a new design change. (And, as we can see, they responded to this customer within two hours of their initial tweet.)

However, we can also see that the Grammarly Twitter support team are monitoring for any brand mentions. In this following example, they simply tweeted at someone who mentioned their brand without actually tagging them to offer some helpful advice.


Calendly

Calendly is another brand that has tagged their support Twitter in their main Twitter bio.

Calendly twitter support

They let customers who need help immediately know that they can either DM @calendlysupport, their support-focused Twitter account, or head to their support page on their website.

Then, in their support Twitter’s bio, they reiterate the same information, but also include a link to their status website so people can check for Calendly outages. They also provide the hours that their customer support team is available and will be responding so that people have an idea of when to expect a reply.

calendly official customer support

From this account, they consistently monitor mentions and respond to customer questions, issues, and complaints. And, as we can see from this example below, as long as it’s within the 9am-5pm ET time frame, they respond relatively quickly. This one was within an hour.


Wishpond

Instead of having a separate support Twitter, Wishpond simply tells its audience to DM their main account for any potential support issues.

This is a great way to make intimate connections with your audience and solve their problems one-on-one without making them public issues.


Snapchat

Social media platform Snapchat has also created its own dedicated support Twitter—however, they don’t link to it in their main Twitter bio. Linking to your support account within your bio is a great way to make sure your customers find it, but it isn’t the only way.

Social media platform Snapchat

The account’s main tweets simply share information about outages, and they haven’t posted any public tweets since July 2022. However, their team still actively checks in with any tags to the @Snapchat or @snapchatsupport Twitter accounts.

The team quickly responds to any tags they see. While they’ll often ask the user to DM them directly with screenshots and more information so they can solve the problem, they’ll also try to help by sharing knowledge base articles and how-to information, like in this tweet below.


Xbox

Xbox also has their own dedicated support Twitter. For large companies like this, though, it comes as no surprise. The Xbox brand has a number of Twitter accounts for various facets of their company. They also do not tag their support channel or other accounts from the @Xbox account bio.

Xbox support Twitter

While their team tends to send generic help messages, they do also include a call-to-action link to send a DM to get more help, like we see below.

If you want to send your own “Send us a private message” CTA button, follow these instructions.

First, navigate to Settings > Security and Privacy > Privacy and make sure the option to “Receive Direct Messages from Anyone” is on.

Then, you’ll need to find your Twitter user ID by extracting it from a tool like this one. Once you have that, you’ll simply paste it into this URL:

https://twitter.com/messages/compose?recipient_id=YOURUSERID

And you can then paste the above link (with your personalized user ID) into any tweet of your choice to add the prompt to DM you.


HubSpot

HubSpot is another brand that has chosen to create a dedicated Twitter customer care channel. And while they don’t link to it from their bio, their pinned tweet mentions the support channel as well as their support website.

Users can then easily head over to the @HubSpotSupport account to get status updates, tweet at the team, or send a DM for assistance. The support team also includes their active hours right in their Twitter bio, but they’ll also send out tweets when those hours change (i.e., when the offices were closed for the holidays).

HubSpotSupport account

The HubSpot support team is very helpful, sharing links to helpful articles and instructions on how to do something to people who tweet requests at them. Here’s an example of how they assisted one customer:

They also help point users to helpful resources, even if they may not necessarily be a HubSpot customer. Now, that’s what we call service.


Start Using Twitter for Customer Care

Get started with offering customer support on Twitter today. Check out our roundup with top Twitter marketing tools to find recommendations for how to best engage with your customers and manage customer success inquiries.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Twitter used for customer service?

Twitter can be used for customer service by making sure you have someone assigned to monitor your Twitter account for customer complaints and respond in kind. You can either use a management tool to house all customer inquiries in one place or you can create a dedicated customer support Twitter account for your brand.

Is Twitter good for customer service?

Yes! Twitter is great for customer service. Many of Twitter’s users prefer to communicate with brands on this platform, so it’s a great idea to have a presence here.

Why use Twitter for customer service?

Twitter offers a unique outlet for your customers to get in contact with you. You can easily respond to tweets or DMs (direct messages) from customers and improve their experience with your business with little to no cost to your organization.

What businesses use Twitter for customer service?

A number of businesses use Twitter for customer service, like Spotify, HubSpot, Grammarly, and Calendly.

Why is Twitter a popular way for customers to complain about a business?

Twitter is the perfect platform for conversations, so users often take to the website to share a bad experience with a business or ask a question directly to a brand. Others will often chime in and brands can easily search their brand names to make sure they’re involved in active discussions.

About the Author
Chloe West is a digital marketer and freelance writer, focusing on topics surrounding social media, content, and digital marketing. She's based in Charleston, SC, and when she's not working, you'll find her reading a romance novel or watering her plants.