Best Buy’s Twelpforce and the Go-To Employee
I think we’ve all know this person: She knows the model number, technical specs, and even the sale price of every gadget in the store. She’s the person people actually wait for when they’re looking for a new piece of equipment or have a question of how something works. She’s the Go To person in your organization. How many times have you wished you could clone her? Best Buy has those employees and they’ve cloned the best of them. Well, sort of.
Twelpforce is the company’s latest Social Media play that they describe as “A collective force of Best Buy technology pros offering tech advice in Tweet form.” So, the Go To employees from all over the country are now collected online and available to answer your questions via Twitter. Perfect. Launched in July of this year, Twelpforce now has over 13,000 followers. That's 13,000 customers interacting with the company's Go To employees on a regular basis.
How does it work? According to the Twelpforce’s Tips & Expectations statement for participating employees:
The promise we’re making starting in July is that you’ll know all that we know as fast as we know it. That’s an enormous promise. That means that customers will be able to ask us about the decisions they’re trying to make, the products they’re using, and look for the customer support that only we can give. And with Twitter, we can do that fast, with lots of opinions so they can make a decision after weighing all the input. It also lets others learn from it as they see our conversations unfold.
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter as another in a long line of digital blips or fads, but the fact is that people are using social technology today to find answers and discuss their experiences with brands. Best Buy apparently takes it so seriously that adds promoting the Twelpforce drove directly to the company’s Twitter account instead of their corporate website.
This is a great example of a company using existing resources (their Go To employees) to create a new experience for their customers via channels where those customers already interact.
Twelpforce is an example of the Harvard Business Review's Six Social Media Trends for 2010.
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