Flipkart is passionate about offering the best customer service in India. Shrinath Navghane (@MrShri), founder of @sm2go, found that out when he tweeted a query to the online book seller. It responded in minutes, but instead of tweeting back in public or asking him to follow the company’s Twitter account so they could DM each other, Flipkart’s tweeter found his email address and contacted him directly.
Navghane was intrigued and recently interviewed Flipkart about its activity on Twitter. Flipkart had been monitoring Twitter streams for more than a year before jumping in late last year because so many of its users seemed to be active there.
For Flipkart, Twitter is no different than the way it interacts with its customers via other media: it’s just one more good way to deal with feedback, complaints, suggestions, etc. However, since Twitter is so public, it can be a great marketing tool if used properly. If a conflict gets resolved, with the entire interaction open to scrutiny by all, those experiences get retweeted and generate great word-of-mouth publicity − all of this in real time.
Flipkart says its biggest challenge is to be engaging and interesting, yet unobtrusive. Also, it strives to make sure the people managing the Twitter stream are consistent in attitude, tone and so on since they are talking on behalf of the organization. The key thing for the company has always been transparency and trust. That’s why Twitter is a natural for Flipkart, as it says Twitter scores high on both counts
