Twitter introduces chatbots for businesses via direct messages

Twitter is introducing two new features that it calls conversational experiences, which are functionally chatbots for businesses in the Direct Messaging feature. The features are called Quick Replies and Welcome Messages. The new features allows for increased engagement between users and business accounts on Twitter. The tools are meant to supplement the customer service efforts by organisations.

The Welcome Messages can be triggered by customer activities on websites, apps or Twitter. The user is not required to initiate the conversation first through a direct message, the business can take the initiative of contacting the user first. Businesses have the freedom to create multiple Welcome Messages depending on the context. Direct Messages allow a mixture of artificial intelligences and customer service representatives to hold the rest of the conversation with the user.

This is beneficial for businesses to rapidly respond to customer service queries and complaints on Twitter. A robotic representation of the company can partially or fully resolve the situation, hand over the conversation to a customer service representative, or pro-actively guide the user to take the necessary steps required for a resolution before a human agent jumps in. Pizza Hut, Evernote, Spotify, Norton, and AirBnB are among the first few companies to use the new service.

Gerald Hastie, Director of Global Customer Service at Evernote says “We are excited about the new features Twitter has developed. The ability to welcome our valued customers and capture their issues before they contact one of our agents helps to streamline the process, accelerate resolution time and reduce customer effort.”

Twitter has tied up with a number of conversational engines to integrate their services into the Direct Messaging feature. These platforms include Assist, Conversable, Dexter, Hobbynote, Lithium, Massively and Sprinklr. The feature is rolling out today across web and the mobile application. For businesses, the program is currently in private Beta, and interested organisations can apply for access to the service here.