Best Buy's Twelpforce

Earlier this month, I wrote about how consumer companies could use Twitter to their benefit. A timely article, Best Buy has announced its 'Twelpforce', which is a Twitter Helpforce.

Twelpforce is essentially crowdsourcing CRM using Twitter, an interesting approach.

Best Buy has created @twelpforce, a centralized Twitter handle for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on Twitter.

A complete description is available here, but essentially, any authorized user can have his tweets show up in his stream and the twelpforce stream by adding a particular hashtag to the tweet.

Instead of the stream being monitored and managed by a single employee or group, as is often the case with 'help desks', it's monitored and responded to by whichever Best Buy employees are interested in doing so. Any Best Buy employee (who has signed up and been verified, I assume) can reply as @twelpforce.

There are two ways Best Buy employees are encouraged to use Twitter.

1. Reply to user questions directed to @twelpforce.
   
2. Best Buy employees are encouraged to search for, and respond to, tweets of interest. As an example from Best Buy's 'tip' sheet, a user tweeted that he needed a new tv (but in a whiny/funny 'the wife is watching 'Desperate Housewives' again, I need another tv!'). A Best Buy employee responds, states that he works for Best Buy, and can answer any questions the guy has about tv's.

With a large, knowledgable, tech-savvy workforce, I think the crowdsourcing is a great fit for them.

But, I find the second a bit creepy. I can understand responding to tweets about the company itself, but if I wrote a funny/joking tweet about needing another tv, I would not want a response from a Best Buy employee offering assistance!

Overall, an interesting approach, and I look forward to seeing how it turns out and what other companies do in this space.