pr-media-blog.co.uk

Update: More - this time from Nielsen - on how retailers can benefit from recognising and engaging with social media - or, a new phrase, Consumer Generated Media.

UK high street retail veteran, Debenhams, came over all social yesterday with its Twitter assistants “experiment”.

The idea was to ensure its staff gave “top notch service” for the launch of its new season stock by giving customers the chance to tweet their queries to @DebenhamsRetail, whereby six assistants in its Oxford Street store would spring into action, either in person or - obviously - via the Twitterverse.

Was it simply a PR gimmick, as Socially Minded questions, or a giant step forward in customer service? Why would a shopper browsing in the store tweet an assistant for help rather than just tapping one on the shoulder?

Well, the Debenhams Twitter team, clearly still buzzing from their Tweet-fest, sent me this message within minutes of being asked how it all went:

But social media, and particularly Twitter, for retailers - while no longer new - is a strategy worth looking at:

Chris Lake over at Econsultancy has taken the time to collate the “27 varieties of tweet used by retailers” (I think he should’ve found 57, just for cringe value) which demonstrate that just pumping out offers is a legitimate, but far from being the only, reason to be a retailer active on Twitter. With this Twitter “to-do” list, a retailer should never be short of something to tweet. And Lake makes the point that using Twitter for customer service is a good way of demonstrating openness and willingness to help while displaying that in an open, online forum.

Asda is one retailer that has grasped Twitter, to the point where it has different Twitter feeds for different purposes: @asda is a place for its “Rollback” offers, getting sneak previews of new TV ads and seeing retweets of media coverage and complimentary comments. @asdajobs speaks for itself, while @asdaserviceteam is monitoring Twitter for customer upset and providing a response and @GeorgePRGirl is talking up new products, picking up quirky media mentions (Allister Darling saying he preferred George suits to Armani) and bringing some personality and humour to the brand.

Clearly, Twitter is not a cure-all for retailers’ marketing communications and customer service ambitions and issues. But as part of a social media engagement programme, it is becoming another effective tool in the box.

Does Management Today’s editor, Matthew Gwyther, have seriously Luddite tendencies or an incisive point when it comes to Twitter? 

Aside from believing Twitter is a “tedious fad we would do well to pull the plug on”, he was singularly unimpressed with its use by news organisations as way of reporting the G20 shenanigans in the City of London last week. He called it “an unwholesome mess”, yearning for a return to “day-after-the-event” news consumption of a “page of newsprint”. Well, while Management Today lives on in hard copy, the printed news product is under increasing pressure and traditional news sources are looking more and more to the web.

And despite Gwyther’s misgivings, the Guardian’s first real foray into front line reporting via Twitter was felt by Janine Gibson, editor of guardian.co.uk to have been a resounding success, as she recounts in the publication’s latest media podcast. The beauty of using Twitter to report, she mentions, is being able to show the many strands of a story that don’t necessarily evolve in a linear fashion. After all, the G20 protests were no more or less about smashed windows than they were about peaceful demonstration - they were many things at once, and - to steal Gwyther’s phrase - Twitter was able to help convey the messiness of that.

EConsultancy’s Chris Lake, despite being a self-confessed “Internet fiend”, takes a phlegmatic view of Gwyther’s dismissal of Twitter: “Some things just don’t work so well on Twitter, which is obviously limited by 140 characters and is no place to tell a story”. But he draws a useful parallel with the Sky News coverage, which was lo-fi to say the least.

As one of the comments posted on the Management Today blog post points out, Twitter could well be a fad; but the parent that spawned it - social media - seems very much “here to stay”.