Never one to miss a PR trick retail giant Debenhams has found a novel way to attract bargain hunters to its annual new season sale this year by launching a customer service experiment using Twitter to answer shoppers' queries.
The department store launched its one-day Spectacular Twitter Experiment in a bid to publicise its annual New Season Spectacular sale by kitting out a team of shop assistants at its Oxford Street store with smartphones to answer customer queries via the Twitter website.
The company deployed one Twitter Assistant, armed with a BlackBerry phone, on each of its six floors, ready to answer questions from customers in changing rooms or queries about sizes and items in stock.
Debenhams said that it was looking at new ways to continue offering top-notch service and rather than finding out the latest celebrity tittle tattle it going to use Twitter to provide shoppers with instant customer service.
Although it is refreshing to see a company putting Twitter to new and exciting alternative uses, few in the PR industry would argue against the real motivation behind the experiment.
Debenhams shamelessly exploited the buzz surrounding the microblogging site, in order to court the attention of the national newspapers eager to report the latest news about the social network of the moment.
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