H&R Block: Responsive customer service
Tax season is over, but it was a big one for H&R Block. In its competition for our online tax preparation dollars, H&R Block was an early adopter on Twitter, joining a little less than two years ago. The company saw Twitter initially as a way to push its marketing message out to a small group of influential people. Call that Twitter Mistakes 101.
"We soon realized that we needed to listen and share, rather than pushing out marketing messages," said Stacy Gratz, marketing manager at H&R Block and the person responsible for H&R Block's Twitter account. Once it started listening and sharing, Twitter revealed itself as a customer service medium rather than a marketing conduit. People need a ton of help during tax season, but it's not always sensible to depend on expensive phone support. Seeing H&R Block on Twitter, customers began using it as an easy way of asking questions and getting advice.
"Depending on the user inquiry, I work with our product team, tax research and/or customer resolution team to make sure we're providing the best possible response. The rule that I live by is to always ask myself, before I post a tweet, 'Am I being helpful and providing value to the user, as well as our followers?'" Getz said. "We now look at this as a brand effort to showcase our tax expertise. Our Twitter feed is now 75 percent @replies."
Those high-value @replies mean that Getz can answer specific questions for individuals, but also, when appropriate, share that knowledge with all of HR Block's 2,000 or so followers who might have similar questions in the future. And if things get too complicated to handle over-tweets, she gets contact information from the user via DM and gets in contact with someone who can help.
Using Twitter in this manner, HR Block is giving users one-on-one customer service that is both personal and relevant, with the possibility of high-quality engagement with a social group of people. That's smart, even if the quantities are limited, because those people might just turn around and recommend the company to their followers.
