It is not often that we see a company take a decision that could change the way that an organisation works. Best Buy have just done this with the launch of Twelpforce. Essentially this new service uses Twitter to enable Customers to interact directly with their 1,000 strong work force to get answers.
My heartfelt congratulations go out to them for being bold. Bold is good. All too often we see companies being conservative in their approach and making incremental change.
As their CMO, Barry Judge in his blog says:
“Twelpforce is obviously an experiment. A very public one. And with this publicity comes a certain amount of risk. In my view, it is a risk well worth taking for many reasons”……he goes on to say “I also know we will make mistakes. Heck, I have made many mistakes in my own use of social media. But, I also know we will learn from them and be a smarter company about how to better serve customers going forward.”
By empowering their workforce to interact with Customers this will being the Customer inside the organisation and help create a Customer centric culture and blurs the lines between Customer Service and marketing. As Barry says “No longer is customer service a department but something that all of us can do”.
3 Comments
Bestbuycmoare a great example of companies being ‘bold’ and seeing how social media can be harnessed. We at Carphone Warehouse are also using social media to engage with customers. Although on a much smaller scale at this stage we’ve got customer service agents on Twitter and will be looking to see how else we can bring our customers and knowledge holders closer together.
Wrote that comment from an iPhone and meant to write at the beginning ‘BestBuy’ and not ‘BestBuyCMO’.
Guy,
Thanks for the post. I know the stuff you are doing on Twitter etc is good! Keep up the great work!.
Colin Shaw