Getting the most out of Twitter support

Twitter is an incredibly effective customer support and success channel that can be scaled much easier than traditional phone or email support channels.

With just a few tips we can get the most out of this growing social support option.

1. Add support hours to your Twitter account profile

Twitter makes it incredibly easy to include our support hours directly on our Twitter profile. This helps set response time expectations with customers which is crucial.

2. Enable the ‘Provides Support’ feature

Let customers know that our Twitter account provides support by quickly enabling this option. Easy peasy.

3. Add team member signatures to replies

Even if it’s just one or two people replying on Twitter, signatures are a great way to make our customers experience that much more personal. It can even help us reinforce a sense of continuity of care.

Not sure what to use for a signature? Common conventions include appending first names (-Darcy) or initials (^DP).

4. Allow anyone to send us a Direct Message

Reduce friction by allowing anyone to send us a private Direct Message (so they don’t have to follow our support account first):

5. Move public tweets to private conversations

Easily move a conversation to a direct message (so we can collect private or sensitive information) by including a special link in replies:

Note: With Buffer Reply we’ve included a simple button to add this to a reply. Alternatively though we built a handy tool to create your own link that can be included manually in replies.

6. Take advantage of pinned tweets

Twitter allows us to pin a tweet to the top of your timeline. Make the most of it and give customers clear support options:

7. Take advantage of your profile bio too

If there’s a separate Twitter handle for support or status updates we can let customers know about in our bio too:

With these simple tips we can start to get the most out of our Twitter support channel.

8. Use automatic welcome messages

Twitter makes it incredibly easy for us to send a welcome message to users when they DM us. We can use this to set reply time expectations or even let customers know what sort of issues we can help with: