On August 1, 2016, Twitter announced the first annual Twitter Awards with the aim to “recognise and celebrate the amazing creative work of our ad clients all over the world.” The Awards are split into six categories: #Live, #Impact, #Creativity, #Scale, #Customer, and #Growth. In the last day, the results were announced with Apple claiming the #Customer award, which “celebrates businesses that excelled at using Twitter for customer service and made loyal friends for life by treating their customers like, well, family.”
Apple won the award for its @AppleSupport Twitter account, which it uses to help customers with general queries or problems they have with Apple hardware or software.
Regarding Apple’s win, Twitter wrote:
“The average online customer service response time is a long, grueling 17 hours. Hours! @AppleSupport decided to do something about that sad stat and use Twitter to respond to customer inquiries and comments. Because of the live nature of Twitter they were also able to pick up conversations with customers at any time, and incorporate rich media into responses to provide even more help to people when and where they need it most.”
Twitter continued on to say:
“@AppleSupport has received outstanding customer feedback and generated more than 150,000 likes and Retweets since its launch in March 2016. @AppleSupport ranks #1 among support accounts for average engagements and average engagements for followers’.”