Measuring Twitter Care Excellence: 7 Indicators to Score Performance

Alexandra Samuel

January 27, 2021

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6 min read

We all know what excellent social care feels like. It’s the delivery service that replies to you within minutes, so that you know when your dinner order is going to arrive. It’s the retailer that spots your photo of that great new handbag, and gives you a virtual high five for your keen fashion sense. It’s the tech company that picks up on your computer glitch, even though you didn’t message the brand directly, and jumps in with a solution to your problem.

But how do you measure care excellence when it comes in so many different forms? That’s the challenge we tackled in From AM to DM: Twitter Care in a 24/7 World, a new report jointly created by Twitter and Sprinklr. It’s a deep dive into the best practices in Twitter care, based on our analysis of nearly half a billion Tweets to and from more than a thousand global brands.

The sheer scale of this dataset gave us an unprecedented opportunity to assess the kinds of best practices that appear in social media how-to guides and blog posts….but all too often, these best practices are recommended without any evidence that they actually work. That’s why we did a brand-by-brand, industry-by-industry analysis, and let the data show which best practices really pay off for brands and customers.

To measure the impact of specific best practices on the caliber of Twitter care, however, you need a way of measuring care excellence.

That’s where the new Sprinklr care score comes in: It’s a balanced measure of care excellence, based on seven different weighted indicators. Together, these indicators reflect the various dimensions of Twitter care, and provide a robust measure of care excellence that works across different industries and countries.

Here are the seven indicators that make up the Sprinklr care score, and why each one matters:

1. Response rate: Replying to a high proportion of brand mentions and customer inquiries demonstrates a willingness to address customer concerns, though not every tweet that mentions a brand handle is actionable or warrants a response.
2. Time to first response: A quick response shows care for and attention to customers, as well to the online conversation.
3. Volume of brand replies: The overall volume of Twitter replies a brand sends to customers indicates the scale of its customer care capacity.
4. Volume of outbound Tweets: The total volume of outbound Tweets, including both original Tweets and replies, demonstrates the brand’s level of engagement with the conversation on Twitter.
5. Following count: Brands that follow a larger number of Twitter accounts demonstrate that they are paying attention to customers.
6. Favorites count: The number of Tweets a brand favorites indicates that it is thinking creatively about how to engage with customers.
7.   Engagement rate: The degree to which customers engage with brand posts shows that the brand is effectively speaking to its audience.

These seven indicators are metrics that any customer care or social media team should already follow. The methodology and dataset used to develop the Sprinklr care score mean that the care score offers insight you can’t get from tracking each individual metric. The Sprinklr care score lets you…

• Benchmark against competitors. Each indicator is scored on a curve, relative to the performance of every brand in our dataset. That means the aggregate score effectively measures relative performance, making it possible to compare across industries–and to benchmark individual brands.
• See the big picture. Tracking care performance metric-by-metric can make it hard to keep your eye on overall performance. By aggregating a range of different indicators into one balanced measure, we ensure you don’t get lost in the trees and miss the forest.
• Focus on what matters. We tested a wide range of weighting schemes and indicators to identify the specific mix that gives brands a meaningful snapshot of overall performance in Twitter care. Focusing on a measure of overall excellence lets you track progress on what really affects customer experience.
• Measure the impact of crucial care practices. Just as the report shows how specific best practices move the needle on care in different industries, the Sprinklr care score can help individual brands assess which practices or tactics move the needle for their customers.

Curious about the Sprinklr care score for your own Twitter account—or for leading brands in your industry? Get in touch. 

Alexandra Samuel is a tech writer and data journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and other media outlets. She focuses on telling stories of the transition to a digital world, and regularly contributes to Sprinklr data-driven content initiatives