Twitter enters the corporate world

IDG news service reports, that Twitter it to make the cross-over into corporate life: Salesforce is to integrate its Service Cloud customer service platform with Twitter.

Salesforce CRM for Twitter is in beta, but will be available this summer at no additional charge for Service Cloud users, the article says.

Launched in January, the Service Cloud combines online customer communities, social networking, knowledge base information, and making data from cloud services like Facebook and Twitter available to e-mail, phone and chat-based customer service representatives.

While there's nothing stopping a salesperson from simply using Twitter direct, the integration pulls relevant Twitter conversations into the Service Cloud and allows users to reply directly, apparently.

In a demonstration, Salesforce showed how someone working for a telecom provider could spot and track a discussion about a headset that a user was having trouble with. The telecom worker could dig through their company's internal knowledge base and then send the Twitter user a link to a help document.

Salesforce is using the beta period to fine-tune the integration's performance and feel, according to a Salesforce spokesman.