Twitter today introduced two new features to help companies create better conversational experiences with customers via Direct Messages on the social media site.
Quick replies and welcome messages in Direct Messages will make it easier for businesses to guide people to better outcomes through a combination of simple automation and human service, the company said.
"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," Ian Cairns, customer service product manager at Twitter, wrote in a blog post earlier today.
Welcome messages let businesses greet people and set expectations as they enter a Direct Message conversation without requiring people to send the first message. Businesses can create multiple welcome messages and deep link directly to specific greetings from Tweets, websites, or apps.
Quick replies let businesses prompt people with the best ways to reply to a Direct Message, whether by choosing from a list of options or guiding users to enter specific text values.
When quick replies and welcome messages are used together, businesses can reduce wait times and educate people on the best ways to interact with them. For example, they can enable faster resolutions by helping customers more easily provide information to solve problems before an agent sees the first message, or they can simplify automated services and transactional flows that were difficult in the past.
Companies including Evernote and Pizza Hut are launching new experiences in Direct Messages that make use of these features.
At Evernote, "we are excited about the new features Twitter has developed. The ability to welcome our valued customers and capture their issues before they contact one of our agents helps to streamline the process, accelerate resolution time, and reduce customer effort," said Gerald Hastie, director of global customer service at Evernote, in a statement.
Twitter worked closely with Assist, Audiense, Conversable Conversocial, Dexter, Hobbynote, Lithium, Massively, Proxima, RozieAI, Spredfast, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social to bring these features to market. It is also working with a wider group of partners who will offer additional solutions to their customers soon.
"The features that Twitter has built into Direct Messages will help people get better experiences with businesses on the platform. At Assist, we're excited to use Twitter's new features to build innovative solutions that bring faster service and solutions for brands on Twitter," said Shane Mac, co-founder and CEO of Assist, in a statement.
Sprinklr, providers of a social media management platform, was one of the firms participating in Twitter’s private beta for quick replies and welcome messages, allowing more than 1,000 companies using Sprinklr to further automate and improve the care experience for their customers looking to connect on Twitter.
"Today's connected and empowered consumers are constantly searching for the fastest, most reliable way to connect with businesses. Twitter has emerged as a powerful platform for instantaneous, seamless customer care," said Elizabeth Closmore, global head of product evangelism and partnerships at Sprinklr, in a statement. "The introduction of these two new features will make customer care on Twitter even more useful for both businesses and consumers. We are excited to bring quick replies and welcome messages to our customers and continue to work with Twitter to help brands build relationships with their customers."
In February 2016, Sprinklr participated in Twitter’s feature enhancements to Direct Messaging and Customer Feedback and is continuing to work with Twitter to grow the customer care options available to consumers using Twitter.
Conversocial worked closely with Twitter's new capabilities to develop Twitter DM Dispatcher, enabling companies to automate responses that help customers resolve their queries. Conversocial client Tesco will be one of the first adopters of this new functionality, which will prompt customers to proactively provide details on their issues via Twitter Direct Message, eliminating the initial back-and-forth between agents and customers to gather more context.
Conversocial CEO Joshua March says businesses are finally recognizing that Twitter can serve "as powerful foundation for core business functions, such as customer service."
The launch of Conversocial's Twitter DM Dispatcher feature, he says, "is a huge step in helping businesses resolve customer queries effortlessly, in-the-moment, and on their mobile device, and we're thrilled to be a part of this launch with Twitter and Tesco. Twitter has already proven itself as one of the best channels for delivering customer service, increasing customer loyalty with lower costs than traditional phone-based care, and this addition is another important step toward enabling businesses to turn off their call centers altogether."
"We're excited to be working with Conversocial in finding new ways to help customers on social media, like the new Twitter DM Dispatcher feature. Our team currently spends 14 percent of DM replies asking for additional customer information, and this new functionality allows us to seamlessly gather more customer context prior to responding, so we can serve them in the most helpful, relevant, and efficient way," said Mike Johnson, product improvement manager at Tesco, in a statement.