photo credit: tuppaware_001
Real estate is a relationship business that is built on trust. Multiple parties rely on each other to reach a common goal. To reach this goal, teamwork and a steady line of communication is essential. Failure to communicate can lead to confusion, delays, errors or missed opportunities. So what does this have to do with Trulia, Twitter and Customer service?
At Trulia, we proactively participate in social media in a variety of ways and on various social networks. Each network is slightly different as is the manner in which the community chooses to engage. Regardless of the network, one thing is for certain, we’re there to be a part of the conversation. That being said, one of the most important things we do is listen. We listen to what consumers and agents have to say - the good, the bad and the ugly.
Twitter is a social network that has become an important communication channel for us - especially for customer service. On any given day, I’ll have a conversation with someone about something Trulia related. Questions like - How to submit a listing, What’s T.A.N, Can you fix my property address, How can I find an agent in my area, Can you help me sell our home faster, Is my MLS on Trulia to things like Can Trulia sponsor my REBARCAMP, Can you speak at our event and so forth. It’s a mixed bag really. All good stuff. In each instance, it brings us a little closer to our audience, customer and clients.
A couple of months ago, I met Erica Parpan - @realsupportva, a virtual assistant at RealSupport on Twitter. Initially, we exchanged a couple of casual hello tweets…sparked by my Trulia hat avatar of all things….
…and RT’s - re-tweets - which helped build up our rapport…
Then, Erica had some questions re: one of her clients listing syndication feeds….
140 characters was not enough room to have this type of conversation so I asked her to email me the details. At that point, a customer service conversation that started on Twitter moved to email where we could exchange more details. After receiving the info, I relied on our great back end Customer Service and Engineering team to assist in fixing her clients issue. Together, with teamwork and an open line of communication we were able to resolve the issue expeditiously.
To read more details on how we helped Erica and her clients in this specific case and another via Twitter, you can read all about it from her perspective on her Active Rain blog titled - Twitter Tip - Building Invaluable Relationships on Twitter to Support Your Business.
I have many other stories like this but just wanted to highlight how a company like Trulia can use a non-real estate specific social network like Twitter for Customer Service. Are you using Twitter for customer service?
Popularity: 8% [?]
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August 29th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Lots of people still don’t get Twitter! It’s noise for some people; for me, I got it real fast one day when I tweeted about Comcast‚Äôs lack of good customer service and all of a sudden a rep from Comcast @ replied me and rest assured he resolved my customer service issue faster than talking to someone on the phone and faster than an automated system. We didn‚Äôt need to move the conversation to email, but it could have gone there had my situation called for it.
Twitter is still in its infancy in terms of what it could do for your business and we are beginning to see more and more discussion about twitter’s best practices.
Twitter is a good way to listen to what people have to say about your product, service or brand. Listening is one thing, responding is another. You have to be proactive in twitter; search for tweets; follow, reply; make friends; read tweets and respond or resolve as often as you update.
That’s my two cents! Twitter is no hype, it’s here to stay!