Apple Offers Tech Support On Twitter With New @AppleSupport Account

In a move that may surprise many, Apple has begun engaging on social media through a newly launched @AppleSupport account.

The announcement from Apple came just a few hours ago, with this tweet:

Welcome to… pic.twitter.com/EZA8eRycDs

— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) March 3, 2016

This is an interesting move for Apple, a company that has typically been known to be social-media-averse, opting to engage in one-on-many broadcast mediums such as TV and print media. Recently, it seems the company has turned over a new leaf, and that’s a win for Twitter, as well.

Customer service on Twitter has been a pretty big focus for the company in 2016, with Twitter announcing enhanced customer experience tools in February, with the ability for customers to engage in private conversations through direct messages and with a newly launched customer feedback feature that enables customers to privately share opinions with businesses after a service interaction. It’s likely that Apple has begun to recognize that Twitter as a channel is often engaging happy (and not-so-happy) customers and now wants to have a two-way conversation.

Still, it looks like Apple had been experimenting on whether it was worth it. This isn’t Apple’s first account on Twitter. Launched in October, @AppleMusicHelp has focused on giving users assistance with Apple Music, as its name states. Chances are, the Apple Music Twitter folks had seen a lot of irrelevant support questions for other Apple services, justifying the need to launch a new dedicated account that addresses a lot more than just Apple Music. Apple’s new support account doesn’t seem to cater to any specific product line, so it will likely be busy.

And that it has. Since its launch four hours ago, the account has grown to 52.5K followers and has already tweeted more than 500 times, engaging customers pretty aggressively. They’re already even showing a savviness with their understanding of Twitter:

@ftahan DM stands for Direct Message in Twitter.

— Apple Support (@AppleSupport) March 3, 2016

Clearly, Apple’s been a bystander for quite some time, learning the ropes and learning how to engage socially with their fans. It’s about time more companies are acknowledging Twitter’s tremendous impact as a solid real-time customer service tool; if anything, that may be what the microblogging service does best.