Companies as diverse as banks, gym chains, travel agencies and large  retailers are using Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, to resolve  consumer complaints in hours or even minutes rather than the usual days, weeks,  or months.

Twitter has become so widely used for airing grievances that companies such  as BT, Halifax and LA Fitness have Twitter accounts specifically to deal with  customer feedback, separate from their general public-facing accounts. For  example, BT has @BTcare,  First Direct has @firstdirecthelp, Halifax has @AskHalifaxBank and  La Fitness has @LAFitnessUkHelp.

La Fitness set up its account after  an article in the Guardian about the company’s poor customer care caused a storm  of protest on Twitter. Hundreds of people bombarded its US account as well  as a little-used UK account that it had previously used solely to share exercise  and diet tips.

It has since has taken on a new public relations agency and set up two  separate Twitter accounts, @LAFitnessUK_HQ, which it uses to promote itself,  and@LAFitnessUkHelp, which deals directly with people’s complaints. The latter  is now dealing regularly with customer services issues.

Last week a member of the gym chain, Guy Sumner, took to Twitter to complain about the gym’s cancellation policy. He tweeted: “Cancellation policy for @LAfitnessUK_HQ is awful. 15 mins on hold and then it’s a month notice from the 1st day of next month … and they won’t do anything to help even though it’s the 3rd day of the month. Awful customer care.”

Just four minutes later a representative of @LAfitnessUKhelp replied: “Hi Guy — can you DM [direct message] me your membership number? Thanks, Alice.”

The Observer asked Sumner what happened next. “LA Fitness gave me an  email address of someone in their customer services team,” he says. “I emailed  her everything that had happened and why I wanted to leave. She then replied and  cancelled my membership so it now only runs until the end of this month instead  of the end of June. Twitter was very useful as I managed to get it all resolved  in two working days.”

Halifax is another company that uses a separate Twitter username,  @AskHalifaxBank, for customer service issues. Earlier this week, one Twitter  user, Kelly-Anne Smith, tweeted about the bank, saying:

“Good LORD @askhalifaxbank how can 1 company make SUCH a mess of Isa  transfers? I’m on hours of phonecalls, branch visits & still not  sorted.”

Minutes later @AskHalifaxBank responded. It forwarded her details directly to  a member of the customer services team and asked them to contact Smith directly.  It ended by saying: “If we can help with anything in future, feel free to  tweet.”

Halifax hasn’t followed up its tweet so far, says Smith, which she is  disappointed about. But she says she would use Twitter again to complain.

“I complained about Fitness First, who immediately messaged me, got my number  and called to fix the issue straight away. They were great and I tweeted again  to say as much,” she says. “I’ve done it several times and on the whole find it  a much more effective way of getting help. Having always tried normal routes  first but to no avail.”

Despite cut-backs, increasing numbers of companies are employing separate  teams to deal with complaints via Twitter and Facebook. Nationwide building  society now has a dedicated social media team and has  just launched a Facebook page to answer questions and promote its products.  It is set to launch a customer-facing Twitter account in the next couple of  weeks.

“If you have a complaint, at the moment, the best way to contact Nationwide  is through the normal channels,” says Paul Beadle, social media press officer  for the building society. “However, we have realised that those channels need to  be expanded.”

First Direct has been using the account @FirstDirectHelp, for some time. The  bank employs a digital team to monitor it and look after Facebook responses and  queries. Its spokeswoman admits Twitter can be a quicker route to getting a  complaint resolved.

“We aim to respond to a tweet within an hour and whilst it’s difficult to put  a figure on it, at the moment it has definitely improved the time to resolution,  which was already good,” she says.

Most of the companies we spoke to were unwilling to admit publicly that  Twitter can be a quicker way for customers to get complaints resolved. But,  speaking off the record, one banking industry representative was more  candid.

“We find there are two types of Twitter people. Those who use it generally to  talk about everything, who might mention a complaint about our brand in passing.  We would contact them and direct them to the normal complaints channels,” he  says.

“Then you get people who are not happy with a response they have had from us  and believe by shouting about this on Twitter they will get a personal response.  It’s true that Twitter can be a way of escalating complaints in this situation.  It is basically another version of a newspaper’s consumer agony aunt, as on  Twitter that complaint could be seen by thousands of people.”

The threat of bad publicity via social media certainly seems to have  companies on the hop. One reader tells the tale of spending three months trying  to get a refund from a well-known travel company using phone calls, emails and  letters. In the end he contacted the company via an email address for its social  media team.

“I sent them a one-line email stating: ‘No tweets yet. But there will be if  this matter is not resolved immediately’,” he said. “This was sent at 15.30 one  afternoon — by 21.00 the same day I had received a full refund, plus a £100  voucher.”

This article comes from: http://www.psfk.com

Tijdens diezelfde periode is het gebruik van mobiele toestellen om online aankopen te verrichten gestegen tot 13,3%, wat een verdubbeling is van het percentage in het eerste trimester 2011. Het totaal aantal online verkopen was licht gezakt, om zich nadien in februari en maart 2012 te herpakken. De groei van het aantal mobiele toestellen en van websites die aangepast zijn aan mobiele toestellen, verklaart de groeiende populariteit van online shopping via een mobiel toestel. Tijdens het eerste trimester werd 13,3% van de online aankopen verricht vanop een mobiel toestel. 2,4% van alle online detailverkopen is afkomstig van een doorverwijzing van de gebruiker vanop sociale media zoals Facebook en Twitter. De social shopper besteedt echter twee keer zoveel als de normale online koper. Dit fenomeen valt te verklaren door het feit dat heel wat gebruikers meer vertrouwen stellen in de aanbevelingen die zij via sociale media krijgen dan in de reclame die zij elke dag met veel moeite proberen te ontlopen. De bedrijven zeggen dan weer dat zij nog altijd veel moeite hebben om de dialoog aan te gaan met hun klanten (Benelux: 69%, wereldwijd: 56%). Maar nu men vaststelt dat gebruikers twee keer zoveel besteden, begrijpt men het belang van het luisteren naar de klant, en het efficiënt gebruik van de sociale kanalen”. Uit een monitoring van de markt blijkt ook dat de gebruikers steeds meer overtuigd raken door hun eigen koopervaring bij webshops. De gebruikers staan positiever op vlak van het gebruiksgemak, de prijs en de bijkomende diensten die het online kopen bieden. Zij zijn dan weer minder tevreden van de beschikbaarheid van de aangeboden producten.
Indien zij de concurrentie willen aangaan met hun off-line tegenvoeters, dan moeten de webshops duidelijker vermelden welke producten echt in voorrad zijn, en wat de leveringstermijn is.

artikel: http://www.digimedia.be

The new hub, which will open in the next few weeks, will organize apps by user ratings, an important change from the current “like” system which can favor apps with huge marketing budgets. App makers will also get a dashboard for tracking how people are rating their apps.

Paid apps are also on the way. Until now, Facebook apps have been free, and developers who wanted to make money did so through in-app purchases. The new App Center will feature all apps that meet its guidelines, and developers can sign up for the beta test program from the announcement page.

The case sports the ability to prop your iPad up for easy hands-free use. Offering two viewing angles, you can either place your iPad at such an angle that the keyboard is fully accessible or at another angle dedicated to viewing media – a conveniently placed media button lines the bottom row of the keyboard that allows you to adjust the volume and pause/play media.

Other notable features include, of course, the integrated keyboard that connects to your iPad via bluetooth and also uses the embedded magnets to automatically lock and unlock your iPad.

Logitech are currently taking pre-orders for the case here for €129, which is reasonable considering you’ll never have to purchase replacement batteries for the keyboard.

Instagram, if you remember, is the stylish, photo-centric offspring of Twitter and Flickr. You and your friends can snap photos, apply your choice of trendy filters, and share your creations on both Instagram’s own network and any other social outlets you choose to plug in. Instagram quickly rose to popularity for its polished, frictionless experience and ability to make typical photographs of a hipster’s lunch or a sunset look slightly more novel than they probably are.

Viddy really does seem to have been heavily inspired by Instagram when building its namesake iPhone app. You can shoot a video, apply any number of “cinematic production packs” (also known as filters or effects) to stylize the footage, and share your creation out to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all with an interface that will probably make most Instragram users do a double-take. But instead of just being a basic video camera app with some social tendencies, Viddy, like Instagram, is also its own social network. You can follow friends and view an activity stream comprised of nothing but their videos, as well as view popular and trending sections with videos from across the network.

Viddy isn’t the first app to make a land grab for the super-simple-social-network-for-video that is entirely run on mobile devices. (Again, like Instagram, you can’t even sign up for Viddy on a traditional computer; you get started and perform all interaction on your iPhone or iPod touch). Socialcam is also attempting to climb the App Store’s ladder in this space, albeit with an interface and feature set that is at least somewhat unique.

Viddy does look interesting, though, from a “fresh start in the mobile space” perspective. This is by no means an official Macworld review, but Viddy’s experience looks polished and you get some nice control over certain aspects, such as how heavily a video effect is applied and whether you mix an audio soundtrack on top of whatever audio you record with your video. Plus, plenty of Instagram users have lamented the fact that it avoids video of any kind, so there certainly seems to be room for a streamlined, Twitter-like network focused only on sharing video.

Eventually, Viddy plans to expand to the iPad, Android, and other platforms, and it’ll add in-app purchase features like premium production packs. For now, though, you don’t have anything to lose but a little bit of time. Viddy is available for free, and your iPhone or iPod touch will need to be running iOS 4.1 or later

Muziekfans hebben er lang op moeten wachten, maar eindelijk is hij er: de iPad app van streamingmuziekdienst Spotify. De applicatie biedt onderweg toegang tot de complete muziekcatalogus en afspeellijsten.

Gebruikers kunnen onderweg kijken wat hot is en zien waar vrienden naar luisteren. Ook is het, anders dan bij de iPhone app, mogelijk naar vergelijkbare artiesten te zoeken.

Ook de functies Gapless playback (nummers zonder pauze achter elkaar afspelen) en Crossfade (nummers in elkaar laten overgaan) kunnen via de iPad app gebruikt worden.

Door de AirPlay integratie is het mogelijk de muziek draadloos naar apparaten te sturen die deze streamingtechniek van Apple ondersteunen.

Om Spotify op de iPad en andere mobiele apparaten te gebruiken is een Spotify Premium abonnement vereist. Niet-abonnees kunnen zich aanmelden voor de 30-daagse Spotify Premium gratis trial.

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