Plugin idea: Twitter customer service

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The discussion revolves around a plugin idea for Discourse to integrate Twitter customer service. vinothkannans proposes creating a plugin that automatically generates topics in a private staff category when someone tweets at a company’s Twitter handle, and syncs replies between Twitter and Discourse.

Advantages of this plugin include allowing staff to support both Discourse and Twitter customers in one place, and making it easy for existing Discourse users to introduce Twitter customer service support.

However, some challenges were raised, such as Twitter’s character limit for replies, which could complicate responses. sam suggests restricting reply length on particular topics or adding a “read more” permalink with Twitter replies. vinothkannans agrees that topics with long replies should be in an unlisted category.

sam proposes that the plugin could be smart enough to split long responses into multiple tweets, and suggests adding an option to “heart” or “retweet” posts. Another challenge is sam points out that often Twitter conversations are dropped in the middle, so the plugin should embed previous tweets to provide context.

joebuhlig suggests that this plugin could also be used for Twitter chats, by giving it a hashtag to follow, and that it could be useful for personal accounts as well.

1

Many products and services using Discourse as their support forum. Also there are many companies using Twitter as their additional customer service portal. So I guess it will be useful to implement Twitter service in Discourse to achieve this?

github-help.png640×659 73.4 KB

For example (as per above image), if someone tweeted by mentioning @GitHubHelp or like @GitHub #help then a topic should be created automatically with that tweet content. It can be in private staff category. When a staff reply to the topic corresponding reply tweet must be posted as @GitHubHelp twitter handle. So both the Twitter conversation and Discourse topic should be in sync for all replies.

Advantages

  • Staff team can support both Discourse and Twitter customers in one place.
  • Existing Discourse users can introduce Twitter customer service support easily.
  • Support topics can be moved to public category when it useful for other forum users
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Capture external Twitter discussion
2

I think its an interesting idea for a plugin. The reply length restrictions on Twitter may complicate things a bit when answering these topics.

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3

In that case we should restrict reply length on particular topics too. If it necessary we can add read more permalink with twitter reply.

This is how the existing Twitter based support teams are doing.

4

That becomes tricky if you want this to live in a secret “staff” area.

But yeah if you can keep the responses short I can see this as something helpful, especially if you have 10 staff member servicing the same “twitter” queue.

5

You are right. That’s a problem.

So if replies going to have increased length then topics must be in a unlisted category.

6

Either that or you plugin is smart enough to do tricks … like split a single response into 2 replies, which is what I would prefer. (and alert you if its about to do it)

I can see us using this for our @discourse account, cause it would be kind of nice to have better and faster coverage there.

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7

Also … an option that if you “heart” the “shadow” copy post it goes ahead and “hearts” it on twitter. Possibly an option for “retweet” as well.

One other problem to consider is that often we notice @discourse is dropped in the middle of a conversation, so untangling what it all means forces us to dig through the timeline of the conversation. It should embed previous tweets for such cases.

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8

Yes these are better workarounds :thumbsup:.

9

If I follow the process of how this works correctly, this might allow folks to use it for Twitter chats as well. Give it a hashtag to follow and you’re off to the races.

As someone who tweets in a limited fashion, I could see using it on my personal account as well. That would allow me to focus the core of my social media broadcasting to one central hub. But that’s all theoretical.

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