Twitter launches customer feedback tool and direct message deep links for businesses

Twitter today announced two tools that could help brands improve their customer service workflows on the social network.

As of today, businesses that use Twitter can have deep links to direct messages show up underneath the tweets they send to customers.

“Direct Messages are a great way for customers to have a private conversation with a business. Customer service conversations often start in Tweets, but then need to transition to a private channel when personal information is required. We’re making that transition as easy as a single click,” Twitter product manager Ian Cairns wrote in a blog post.

And, in the next few weeks, Cairns wrote, “select brands” will get access to a new feature called Customer Feedback, which will allow businesses to have customers rate their interactions with brands in private direct messages.

Above: The Customer Feedback feature in Twitter.

Image Credit: Twitter

“With this feature, businesses will be able to use two industry standard question formats: Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS®) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT),” Cairns wrote.

And Twitter is thinking beyond Twitter.com and the Twitter apps here. The company is working to get these tools integrated with partners Conversocial, Hootsuite, Lithium, Salesforce, Sparkcentral, Spredfast, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social, Cairns wrote.

Twitter has clearly thought about ways to make its tools more useful for companies, which might already pay for ads from the social network. Going beyond just having companies interact in public on Twitter shows the company is willing to experiment with its core product. Twitter has shown this willingness recently in other parts of the product, including the introduction of the algorithmic timeline.

But monetization is as critical as ever for Twitter, and customer service is one of many areas where Twitter can do more. Now that’s happening.