Enquiring consumers will see this as an opportunity to communicate with you, especially if other customer service channels are harder to find. 

And if that business still ignores the wronged customer’s enquiry? Well it had better batten down the hatches because there’s a Twitter storm coming its way. 

At the end of last year I reported that 72% of customers expect complaints answered in one hour. If companies don’t respond within the one hour time frame, 38% of people feel more negatively towards the brand, and an impressively galvanised 60% will take action against the brand using social media.

The best brands on Twitter react quickly and helpfully to all enquiries, even if there’s a separate social customer service channels set up elsewhere.

Here I’ll be taking a look at Leaderboarded’s regularly updated list of UK Twitter social customer care leaders, an index created from a combination of Klout score and Twitter activity (mentions, tweets and retweets), to see how some of the best brands fair.

Here’s the board as it stands on 11 June 2014. You can click the image for the entire 100.

Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s are on to an immediate winner here, with its Twitter description specifically saying it’s here for customer service and inviting questions from consumers.

Sainsbury’s commitment to customer service is pretty intense. As I looked through the ‘tweets and replies’ feed it was updating at a rate of three or four tweets per minute.

It’s pretty exhausting going through even just a few screens of replies. It’s an interesting insight into the world of what customer service representatives must endure on a daily basis. 

What becomes apparent is that the Twitter account is working hard in tying together all of Sainsbury’s offline and website customer service teams. In fact it seems to be doing most of their work for them, and chasing them up when they’re failing the customers.

Sainsbury’s skill is treating the serious complaints and the slightly more… uh, I have to be careful here… ‘trivial’ ones with the same amount of urgence, importance and also in a friendly human manner.

Many of Sainsbury’s customer service tweets also end with a name, which is important as it shows there is a human being behind the account.

Although it doesn’t publish its working hours on the description, someone is there to specifically say that’s it for the day, and the next morning customer enquiries through the night were picked up at 8am.

Royal Mail

If there’s a customer service team that should be prepared for flak, it’s Royal Mail’s.

Royal Mail responds calmly, helpfully and quickly even to the most colourful of complaints. 

Most of the time this Twitter account seems to act as a replacement for the Royal Mail website’s own tracking service.

Royal Mail seems to be happy to take a customer’s tracking number, check the status of their delivery for them and inform them over Twitter, rather than just directing them to a relevant page on the website.

Sky Help Team

Sky Help Team operate a very generous 7am – 11pm opening hours, seven days a week, and this information is emblazoned across the header image and in the description.

Sky also doesn’t let itself be limited by Twitter’s 140 character limit. Instead it offers a link to a shortened URL that takes the customer through to a page where tweets can be expanded on.

This is great if greater detail is needed, and also means that customer service agents can add their names, mention the user by name and put some added manners in there too.

Sky also offers links to its live chat service. Generally speaking, customers would normally prefer that there’s continuity in channels. If you’ve opened communication via one channel, a business should respect that this is your preferred route and deal exclusively with you there until the end.

However this can’t always be possible, especially with sensitive account information, therefore a more secure line needs to be opened.

The trick is then returning that customer back to Twitter for the resolution so the rest of the public can see its successful outcome.

It’s also good to see that even though this has been set up as a specific customer service channel, Sky’s various other Twitter channels also help with customers’ enquiries and complaints.

South West Trains

If you think a Royal Mail customer service team has to have thick skin you should try working on the Twitter account of any train operator.

Unfortuneatly I’m highlighting the following as how not to do customer service…

All of the information may be correct according to South West Trains, but to reply in such a curt, unfriendly manner is inexcusable.

This kind of reply is generic and helps absolutely nobody….

And this doesn’t even really answer the question properly…

Going back to my earlier point, it’s absolutely vital that any brand must remember that its social media presence is its public face. We can all see it. We can all write about it in our own digital marketing blogs and highlight what a crappy job they’re doing. 

Personalisation, empathy and speed are all absolutely integral to getting Twitter customer service right. There is a huge disparity between the quality of Sainsbury’s customer service and South West Trains customer service, yet on the above index there are only seven places separating them.

It shows that with not too much effort, your company could make a huge positive impression on social and reach a bigger audience.

For more insight, find out what social customer service is really worth and how these 20 top UK retailers handle social customer service.