With Twitter still enjoying huge growth, it seems every business wants to have a ‘Twitter Strategy’. Here’s one of the worst I’ve seen yet: shop staff tweeting to customers who are in the shop.
Yes, British department store Debenhams is today experimenting with having six members of staff on the shop floor of its London Oxford Street store with mobile phones, performing customer service over Twitter.
If this was for customers thinking of visiting the store it would be great, but this is aimed at customers who are already in store and could much more easily ask a question to a human.
Revolution reports that:
The company said: “For one day only, six members of Debenhams staff in the Oxford Street store will become Twitter Assistants – answering and responding to customer requests via the social network.
“There will be one assistant on each floor of the building, answering queries from anyone using the service on their mobile whilst browsing in-store or those sitting at work itching to join the fun.”
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Call me a traditionalist, but if you’re in the shop surely it would be preferable to actually speak to one of these members of staff rather than type out a message to them? Looking at the Debenhams Twitter account it certainly seems like quite a few people have joined in with questions for the ‘Twitter Assistants’. How many questions are coming from within the store is unclear.
You can ask a question to Debenhams’ team using the hashtag #debtwtasst.
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