Apple Launches Customer Support on Twitter; Lessons Learned

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“Social media” may no longer generate the buzz, headlines, and excitement that it did a few years ago, but it increasingly represents a central communication channel – and, really, a key component of life – for many of today’s consumers.

It, consequently, remains a pivotal strategic focus for today’s customer experience strategies.

Mindful of this reality, Apple officially launched its “AppleSupport” Twitter account on March 3, 2016. The iconic brand has long maintained a visible, far-reaching Twitter presence, but @applesupport represents its first journey into providing direct customer service on the network.

The service has already made a massive impact. As of press time (12PM ET on March 11), @applesupport has issued over 12,000 Tweets and amassed over 194,000 followers.

The statistics speak powerfully to the importance of social customer service. Apple’s customers may hate using phone, e-mail, and in-person channels, but thousands clearly see value in a Twitter option. Customer centricity involves engaging on the customer’s terms; for thousands of Apple customers, those “terms” involve Twitter.

In addition to confirming the value of social customer care, @applesupport provides a valuable learning and benchmarking opportunity. It allows us to analyze the mechanics of a social customer care initiative and extract best practices.

Here are some takeaways from our evaluation of @applesupport.

Apple Responds: The 12,000 Tweet figure says it all: Apple is making a serious effort to respond to its customers. Whereas some companies may use social media to keep up appearances – and perhaps pick off some low-hanging fruit – Apple is clearly committed to engaging its customers. New responses seem to be posted every minute, if not sooner. While we cannot guarantee Apple is responding to every customer (which, in theory, should be a necessity of a support channel), it clearly appears to be pursuing such a goal.

Inconsistent Response Times: Based on conventional web standards – which reveal social media response times can often fall in the 4-24 hour range – Apple is performing very well. That said, there is definitely some inconsistency to the response rate, and it does not appear the company is adhering to a true first-come, first-serve queue.

While some customers are receiving an initial response within 30 minutes, others are being required to wait several hours. A wait time of a few hours is not comparatively bad in today’s market, but a greater degree of consistency would certainly preferable.

In an ideal world, a customer should have complete visibility into anticipated response times for the various channels; such knowledge can play a huge role in determining their preferences and behaviors.

Public vs. Private: Many @applesupport responses involve asking the customer to transition the discussion to DM. The approach is not unjustified, as a substantial number of the cases involve very specific issues or account/product details that would not optimally be handled in a public forum.

That noted, an organization should always consider the public good of openly dealing with such an issue before moving it to a more private channel. There is doubtfully an Apple issue not being experienced by many other customers, and an open, searchable Twitter feed containing the “fix” for the issue would prove invaluable for those customers. It, moreover, would improve operational efficiency, as the business would not have to respond to each customer directly.

Privacy and compliance issues obviously trump such public good. “Stage fright” should not.

If the issue absolutely has to be taken private, take it private. If your motivation for taking a broadly relevant issue private is fear that you may be judged for improperly or inefficiently handling the issue, get over that fear, fix your processes, and do what is best for your customers: keep it public.

Efficiency and efficacy expectations are not tempered because the conversation is happening away from the public eye; if anything, the personal, private nature of the DM environment may elevate the customer’s standard for care. To burden yourself with those heightened expectations and strip yourself of the chance to broadly help your entire customer base, you better have a great reason for going private!

Not an Answering Machine: While we cannot confirm what is happening within DMs, we can confirm that Apple is not taking an openly defeatist approach to @applesupport. It is not overtly urging customers to transition to other channels; it is giving them every reason to believe their problem will be solved on Twitter.

That mentality is pivotal to contemporary customer care. The omni-channel revolution is not about using certain media as information boards, answering machines, or routing devices; it is about providing customers with the help they want where they want it.

Language Barrier: At present, it appears Apple is only providing Twitter support in English: customers asking for help in alternative languages are being asked to choose an alternative channel. The project is still young, and Apple deserves credit for responding to the foreign-language inquiries with honest information.

By the same token, a global business that anticipates receiving non-English Tweets should certainly consider offering non-English responses. If hiring dedicated staff to handle foreign language social media conversations is impractical, cross-training those who provide non-English support over the phone may be a workable compromise.

Technological solutions that facilitate translation in social and web channels are beginning to emerge, which will further remove resource barriers to providing multi-lingual social customer care.