Pinterest Launches Business Tools

The photo sharing website, Pinterest has already been used by businesses for creating communities, increasing product familiarity and bolstering their social media campaigns.

Now companies will be able to create business accounts with their name, instead of first and surnames. Their photo boards will be able to earn a ‘verified’ badge by embedding their websites with hidden code which, in turn is recognised by the Pinterest system.

Is this a sure sign that the image-rich website will be monetised in the near future? It was revealed that 97% of the personal accounts on Pinterest are held by women, so companies already have a clear demographic at their fingertips.

On the website, the question of how they make money is answered with a vague response: “In the past, we’ve tested a few different approaches to making money such as affiliate links. We might also try adding advertisements, but we haven’t done this yet.”

If the previously clean design is cluttered by advertising, it might be a good idea to have these commercials ‘pinnable’, where you can share your favourite advertising. This would be especially effective during the Christmas advertising season, where companies such as Debenhams and John Lewis make more emotive short-films.

Shoppers Put Big Demands on Social Media

CONSUMERS looking for an instant response to their inquiries and complaints are turning to social media sites in their droves.

Gerd Schenkel, executive director of Telstra Digital, says the number of round-the-clock staff waiting to deal with customer inquiries has grown six-fold in the past 12 months.

"The live chat is growing very strongly because our digital channels as a whole are growing," he says.

"The growth rate for live chat is up about 600 per cent from last year to this year and this month we expect to offer about 140,000 chat sessions with our customers."

Time-poor Australians are among those who use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to have their queries answered at a quicker rate, rather than phone or send an email.

Schenkel says Telstra now has several hundred employees working in their chat team to deal with real-time online customer inquiries.

"Live chat is often more convenient for customers because they are already on the website or they're already on a mobile," he says.

"They've seen a bill or a product and they have a question about it, so we find it easier for many customers to just click a button and have a quick chat session as opposed to making a phone call."

Self-employed massage therapist Belinda McLeod, 39, recently used social media to interact with her telecommunications company after having some problems with her broadband connection.

"I get frustrated when I contact call centres and am put on hold for half an hour," she says. "I couldn't find instant messaging and the customer service wasn't open on Sunday, but there were people online.

"I thought by raising issues publicly (on Twitter) they would do something about it."

She says the telco responded to her query on Twitter several hours later.

Matt Travers is the founder of new comparison website ServiceRage, which analyses customer feedback, and says the growing presence of social media is forcing companies to deal with customers in the public domain.

"Anyone can see an exchange happening between the company and the individual if they are using Twitter or Facebook," he says. "The balance of power is in the consumer's favour. Now more than ever it's important for companies to deliver good service."