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Twitter, love it or hate it, is having a massive impact on the way we communicate with our friends, colleagues, idols and, most importantly for this blog post, the brands we consume. I personally am a huge fan of Twitter and not necessarily for the traditional reasons; I am not a massive celeb fan and, although people around me may disagree (and this blog may suggest), I don’t particularly like talking about myself. No, my main reasons for loving Twitter are twofold:

1) I get to see loads of content that I otherwise would never, ever, have found myself

And…

2) I get to interact/vent at/be rewarded by the brands and products I surround myself with

Concentrating on point 2, let me give you a few examples of how Twitter has had a direct impact on my life and the way I interact with brands…

Me and my new Xbox

Having recently blogged about Xbox Reverb (a new music initiative being run by Xbox through social networks) on the Headbox blog, I noticed they were running a competition to win Bestival tickets via Twitter – @xboxreverb. Being a huge fan of Kraftwerk and the Isle of Wight I entered without a second thought. A week or so passed and, much like all competitions I enter, hope of winning was fading rapidly….but then out of the blue, on the day before the festival began I received this message:

‘@xboxreverb – Well done! You’ve won 2 tickets to this weekend’s Bestival courtesy of Xbox! Please can you confirm receipt of this message by DMing Reverb?’

I cannot describe through the medium of words the joy I felt at the time of reading the above message. I am not a person who wins things, so to get my hands on a prize of this nature was an amazing surprise and left me literally brimming with excitement…little did I know how short lived this moment of glory would be.

As soon as I read the message that Reverb sent me I headed over to their Twitter page to claim my well deserved tickets only to find something very similar to THIS.

Other than through Facebook (which they weren’t responding to) and Twitter I had no chance of getting in touch with the Xbox Reverb team and my increasingly desperate tweets reflected the immediate onset of self-pity:

‘Won tickets to Bestival thanks to @xboxreverb but now their Twitter site is down and I have heard no news about the tickets….gutted.2:06 PM Sep 11th’

‘The one time I win something it all goes wrong!!!!5:01 PM Sep 11th’

‘don’t know whether to laugh or cry, won Bestival tickets and now can’t get hold of the ppl who chose me as a winner, nightmare 1:29 AM Sep 12th’

As the weekend passed and Bestival disappeared for another year I didn’t know what to do, on one hand I had won a competition and surely deserved prize. On the other hand the offered prize had been and gone and my dreams dashed. It was at this time, that the power of Twitter truly came to the fore and my experience with Xbox Reverb turned 360, in more ways than one!

Having read the messages of desperation I had left over the weekend Xbox Reverb got back to me explaining that their Twitter page had gone down because of alleged spamming (it is back up now). They also went on to say that they were going to give me an Xbox 360, 2 x gig tickets of my choice and guest list entry to all Xbox Reverb events for the trouble I had…Hooray!

Now, I would really like to think that these prizes were a gift straight from Xbox’s heart to compensate for their competition fail. However, in retrospect, I can’t help thinking that as I broadcast the failings of Xbox Reverb to my 80 followers they had to act quickly to, effectively, shut me up.

Kraftwerk at Bestival - I wasn't there.

Twitter is a strange new world for brands, it is brilliant for them to connect with their consumers, potential consumers and promote the brand in general. However… Twitter unleashes a new world of pain for brands and their customer service departments. If I hadn’t used Twitter to vent my frustrations I would have told three or four people over the weekend about my experience, no biggie for Xbox and probably no shiny new Xbox 360 for me.

However due to the ambient nature of Twitter, and the fact that I received a few retweets and @ replies, my message could have potentially reached an audience of hundreds, a biggie for Xbox and their fledgling music initiative.

So in the end, due to the prizes I was offered, rather than publicly continue my Xbox rant and curse my luck at the whole Bestival palaver, I ended up posting this message:

‘@xboxreverb have just given me an Xbox 360 to make up for Bestival ticket problem!!! AMAZING!! thanks guys!3:28 PM Sep 14th’

Now when I look back on this message I do regret it, for the following reasons:

• I haven’t yet managed to decide whether the prizes I received were of equal value to the Bestival experience
• As much as I want to play on my new Xbox 360, I don’t have the time to put the hours in and plus my girlfriend was already calling it ‘Matt’s new girlfriend’ before I even plugged the thing in… not a good sign
• I don’t think however long I wait to cash in the free gig tickets, Kraftwerk will be playing in the UK anytime soon, so my quest to see them live will continue

Had I let Xbox off the hook by being blinded by the thought of finally playing GTA IV? Had I been too nice and given in too easily? What would have happened if I had rejected the Xbox 360 on offer? Twitter is a brave new world and the rules are not set, what would have happened if I had really kicked up a tweet storm?

I guess I will never know the answers to the above questions and to be honest I think Xbox dealt with the Twituation (sorry) quite well. Even though I didn’t feel completed satisfied at the end of this ordeal, I had learnt a little bit about brands on Twitter and this experience helped me no end in my next Twitter brand encounter…

BT Tweet Home

Before I even begin this section I do have to say I am not a fan of BT, I have never had a good experience with them and I do hold somewhat of a grudge towards them. I will try to be objective when analysing the sequence of events that follow, however please bear the above in mind!

Having recently moved into a newly renovated flat with apparently no phone lines I have been through a massive ordeal with BT, this ‘disagreement’ ended up leaving me so angry that I just had to leave a message on Twitter which went like so…

‘Who on earth let BT get a monopoly on phone lines, Their customer service is literally the worst ever.12:35 PM Sep 29th’

Little did I know the can of worms I had just opened, after getting a few @ replies in agreement, I then received a message from @btcare (within an hour and a half which I was pretty impressed by) saying:

‘BTCare @mattsimpson1985 Can we help at all? 2:04 PM Sep 29th’

In my shock at this seemingly quick and efficient response from BT, I responded instantly with caution… and a touch of anger:

‘@BTCare Well ,can you make the department that was supposed to ring me a week ago to give me a call? I have rung to prompt them as well.8:36 PM Sep 30th’

Twitter Newbies

So after this they DMed me getting my details and I received a phone call from the BT Twitter team shortly after this, again a pretty quick transaction. After going through all the details with the Twitter assistant it became clear that she couldn’t deal with my circumstance at the time, so she said she would ring me back later to let me know what was going on.

The rest of the day went by without so much as a whimper from BT, typical? Well no, luckily I checked my Twitter account that evening and saw that I had received a message from @BTcare:

‘Hi, I will get back to you tomorrow about this as have requested some more info. Many Thanks.’ 4:32 PM Oct 2nd

Instantly confusion set in. Should I be angry at BT for not getting back to me via the phone as they said they would? Or, are they right in presuming that I would check my Twitter account as this was how we made contact in the first place?

This new form of interaction between me and a huge corporation had taken a funny turn due to there not being any rules of engagement within Twitter. So, I decided I would go with the flow and after a couple of back and forth messages and phone calls it was decided that the BT Twitter team couldn’t actually deal with my problem and I would need to speak to someone more senior. The very next day I received a call from said more senior person and explained that I could not speak to them at work and it would be great if they could call me post 6.30pm, when I would be free to chat.

5 days past and I had received several calls from BT prior to 6.30pm (when I was at work and therefore could not talk), they also left no phone number to call them back on; so any contact was completely in their hands. On top of this, I then received a bill which had some hidden surprises included, again in the heat of the moment I was compelled to tweet and this time I knew what I was doing…

‘Got another bill from BT today,not only charging me for a service that I never asked for but also charging me for not using it. JOY! 3:20 PM Oct 9th’

As expected, I received a message back from @BTcare within an hour and half, only this time, it was not nice, I had riled the communications Tweet beast and their passive aggressive fire breath:

‘BTCare – 5 calls were made since Sunday and none succeeded in contacting you. Would you reply with a good contact time? Thanks 4.39 PM Oct 9th’

I followed procedure and let them know when I would be available the next day (Saturday), 12pm-5pm. In this 5 hour window I left my flat and my mobile for 5 minutes and yes, predictably, I missed their call. Completely my fault, but this missed call was the final straw and with no phone number to ring the Twitter team back on, I went back to the beginning and rang the general BT call centre. Now, I had rung the call centre several times before the Twitter interaction started and had hit brick walls. I had been promised call backs which hadn’t happened and was cut off several times when on hold.

This time though I had had enough and it was time to end the ordeal. After an epic 45 minute conversation with heated exchanges, ring back refusals, being bounced around several departments and a lot of kerfuffle at both ends, I came out victorious and finally free of the contract that I never wanted. I was happy, exhausted and generally relieved that the whole ordeal was over.

When I look back on this whole situation I can’t help but feel that the Twitter element of it was a bit of a waste of time. I haven’t quite worked out whether this was my fault or BTs, I think as soon as they got back to me via Twitter I automatically presumed, or was lead to believe, that this would be the department that would be dealing with my problems. I think this was wrong and when thinking about it, it probably shouldn’t be what a Twitter customer service department actually does.

Having been through these experiences, I have come to a few conclusions about Twitter and what it means for brands and consumers alike.

The first thing I have to say is that I think it is very brave for any brand to create a Twitter account and try and deal with customer service problems directly through the site. Putting a brand on Twitter opens it up for direct, unsupervised and universally monitored interaction with their consumers. In both of my personal situations I could have gone on a Twitter rampage, bad mouthing @xboxreverb and @btcare until the cows came home. Yes it would have been unnecessary and unwarranted, but seriously what could have they done about it? We live in the age of the empowered consumer and Twitter is just another example of this. Consumers can potentially spread their messages to hundreds, if not thousands, of people through a couple of Twitter posts and make a brand look terrible for it.

To begin with, Twitter will be a rough ride for brands

Brands cannot censor this and they certainly cannot stop this, so what can they do?

Well the first thing to do, in my opinion, is not to shy away from it. I think BT are doing a really great thing by trying to deal with their users problems on Twitter. If consumers are going to say something about your brand, negative or positive, they will say it whether you are there are not. So why no be there to at least try and resolve any potential situation. It is going to take time to work out how exactly to deal with your consumers on Twitter effectively, so in the mean time do not run away from the conversation just because there is no instant resolution. Join in, talk to your consumers and see if you can help them in any way, they will appreciate it and step by step it will help to evolve the foetal world of Twitter customer service.

My main issue with the service I received, from BT in particular, was that it was kept in the Twitter team when it was clear that other departments could resolve my issue a lot quicker. Having spent a lot of time working with The Carphone Warehouse on their social media strategies and comparing that with my experiences with BT and Xbox it has become apparent that even though issues are raised on Twitter, they should not necessarily be dealt with there. I would have been much happier with BT if their Twitter team had rung me, listen to my issue and then passed me on to the correct department rather than try and deal with something that they essentially couldn’t resolve. I feel this is something that will happen in the future, but again it’s all part of the Twitter customer learning curve.

I don’t think I have ever felt closer to the brands I like/consume, Twitter has given me a direct line to them and their campaigns. On top of the Xbox/BT dramas, I have also become a mystery shopper for EAT, won tickets to The Big Pink album launch party thanks to Dazed and Confused magazine (the tweet morning after the party – ‘Oh god dying, the whisky. Oh the whisky.’) and I am currently in negotiations with Mexican food kings Benitos Hat about sponsoring our office Burrito eating competition.

To me it feels like a new age for consumer/brand connection, on Twitter everyone is on the same level. Consumers are not looking up to brands; they are treating companies like they would their friends, casually, naturally, informally and without consequence. Surely this is the relationship that every brand wants with their consumers?

Brands using Twitter effectively are still pretty rare and Twitter customer service departments are just a plain novelty. However if the world of micro-blogging and status updating continues to grow these novel services will become pioneering and we’ll look back on The Carphone Warehouse, Xbox and BT’s role in how they shaped the strategy that companies apply when using Twitter. So my message to all brands on Twitter, including BT and Xbox, – keep up the good work, what you’re doing now is the future!

Matt