Twitter tries to humanize customer service interactions

Dive Brief:

Twitter is rolling out Custom Profiles that indicate when a direct message is coming from a person rather than a brand's chatbot, as reported by VentureBeat and Marketing Land.
For verified brand accounts, direct messages from the brand can be customized with the name and photo of the person interacting with the customer. When a DM conversation switches from the brand itself to the identified person, customers would understand the interaction changed from a bot to an actual person.
T-Mobile is the first Twitter verified brand account to use the feature.

Dive Insight:

A lot of brands are using chatbots these days to automate dialogs around common customer service questions on digital platforms. However, the interaction is not always smooth and marketers who take customer service seriously are looking for ways to improve the customer experience, something Twitter is clearly hoping to help them achieve with this news.

The new custom profiles give brands more control over the customer service experience on the platform, especially as possible upset consumers could become frustrated feeling like they are dealing with a bot rather than a person who can solve their issue. Putting a name and face behind the interaction as well as providing a cue as to when the interaction has shifted from a bot to a person should provide more peace of mind for customers engaged in DMing with a brand.

For all the various issues facing Twitter, customer service is one area where it has been proven to be both effective and popular with its user base. Research from October found that brands using Twitter for customer service drove up to 20% more customer spending.

Brands have long understood Twitter's potential as a customer service tool and the platform has taken steps to accommodate this use case. Last September it rolled out new customer service capabilities including a new Customer Support settings page and the ability for users to direct message brands’ accounts rather than tweeting complaints and question to the public timeline.