Corporate Twitter Feeds: How to do it right

Many companies now have a Twitter feed but many of those do not use their Twitter feed to its full extent. One company that is getting it right though is House of Fraser (@hotathof). I follow their Twitter feed and am not bombarded with marketing, constant re-tweets saying how great their products are (as some corporate feeds do). However, when I needed to contact them I turned to Twitter and was extremely impressed with the level of service I received.

I got an email from House of Fraser yesterday stating that my delivery had been dispatched and could be tracked online. Excitedly I clicked the link, only to be taken to the courier’s website and told that they had no record of that tracking number. When this was still the case a couple of hours later, I tweeted @hotathof to see how I could check I had the correct tracking number. I got a reply after an hour or so and was asked to DM my order number to them and they would check for me. They replied and said I definitely had the correct number, and I said it still wasn’t showing up on the courier’s website so Amy (who was signing off the DMs) said she would investigate further. By the time I got home yesterday afternoon I had two further DMs waiting for me telling me that the package hadn’t yet departed the warehouse and it would be doing so either yesterday afternoon or early this morning. By the time I got to work today, I had a further email with a tracking link to the courier’s website letting me know that my parcel was definitely on its way and should be delivered today (which it has been).

All of this didn’t require much effort on the part of the person (team?) monitoring the Twitter stream, but has impressed me no end and has me thinking I will definitely order from House of Fraser again (and here I am recommending them to you, too). I am forever saying that most companies could learn a lot from the likes of ASOS when it comes to online retailing, who also make good use of Twitter and will endeavour to answer your questions (I once enquired how tall the models were so I could gauge how short a skirt would be on me, I got an answer and they now provide that information on the site) but I may now be changing that to commending House of Fraser instead.