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Twitter as a customer service tool

I love Twitter. Though I rarely tweet, I follow several people. I recommend all my clients to set up a Twitter page for their website.

Twitter gives you one more avenue to reach your users. It gives one more room to communicate with your site visitors. You can do Twitter only contests and sales exclusively for your followers. This is a great way to get more interactive.

But what about using Twitter as a customer service tool? Here’s my recent encounter. First off, I am a Nascar fan. Yup, it’s true. I follow #29 Kevin Harvick and his wife Delana. So, I ordered a t-shirt from thier e-store. When it arrived, there was a hole in the sleeve. I tried twice contacting their store’s customer service with no response. I don’t know if my emails went to their spam box, or just got overlooked. At any rate, with phone number visible on the site, I sent an @ Twitter message to Delana asking how I could contact someone about my order.

Of course, their e-store has a Twitter account as well! (The Harvick’s are avid Twitter-er’s). We were able to use Twitter’s DM function to get the entire issue sorted out. Without Twitter, I don’t know how I would have contacted them about my issue.

Twitter is not only a social tool, but can and should be used as one more avenue of contact for your customers, clients and site visitors.

August 6, 2010/0 Comments

Hootsuite Rocks at Managing Social Networks!

Business, Tips

I manage a few Twitter accounts and it gets annoying trying to remember the various usernames/passwords. Not to mention the time it takes to log in to each account individually. Enter Hootsuite.

Hootsuite allows you to manage your social networks with one simple log in. Not only that, you can send one tweet out via different accounts and even schedule your tweets to post later. Everything is in columns featuring your Home Feed, Mentions, Direct Messages and Pending Tweets. Want more? Add a column to show your sent tweets, messages out, pending tweets or even lists and searches.

Hootsuite isn’t just for Twitter. You can also update Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm with Wordpress, MySpace and Foursquare in Beta. All can be updated at the same time or individually. Type your message, choose your social network and click send.

I’ve tried Tweetdeck in the past, but being a desktop program, it was just one more thing running in the background. With Hootsuite being browser based, it’s simply one more tab open in Firefox while I’m online.

I’ve even added my Facebook pages for my websites so I can update those from one location as well! If you use something different that you like better, let me know. Maybe you’ll change my mind.

June 18, 2010/0 Comments

Accept credit card payments with your phone!

Business

How awesome! This is an excellent service for work at home parents, especially those that also do craft fairs and such. Square was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

When you sign up with Square, you’ll receive a free card reader. Plug the reader into the audio of your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or Android and start accepting payments. The fees, compared to other merchant accounts, are very reasonable, only 2.75% plus 15 cents. A number can also be keyed in, as opposed to swiped, for a slightly higher fee. Receipts are delivered electronically either by email or text message.

I don’t think Square will replace Paypal when it comes to online payments, but it does seem much better than the current merchant account options for offline acceptance of credit cards. If you participate in craft shows or other offline sales, I think you should take a look at Square. You could avoid those set up and monthly fees associated with your current merchant account.

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