Bank of America Is On Twitter Too.

Financial Elite isn't the only one to jump on the Twitter band wagon. Since January, Bank of America has been providing a new way for customers to contact the bank with requests for help or information--via Twitter, the free social networking group.

When customers with service problems contact BofA_help on Twitter, Bank of America asks "Anything I can do to help?" and then responds with messages of no more than 140characters at a time, which is the maximum length allowed by Twitter.

The bank's official voice on Twitter, David Knapp, also leads the Bank of America Customer Experience team as part of an overall pilot program on communication methods designed for social groups. His goal is to respond to customers who turn to Twitter for help.

"Most customer service conversations are one to one," he said. "Twitter expands the interaction to be one to many. So customers and their "followers," the Twitter term for friends, see that this is a legitimate way to connect with Bank of America.

"As a company," he continued, "our goal is to continuously make banking easier, faster and more convenient for consumers, so Twitter enables us to do that and demonstrate our commitment to help customers anywhere they choose to bank."

In the beginning, Knapp would find customers on Twitter primarily by searching for twitter messages that mentioned Bank of America by name.

Now, users are beginning to seek out Knapp, either as his followers or because they follow someone who asked Knapp for help. Customers typically use Twitter to escalate requests after first contacting customer service through traditional methods,but some customers are turning to Twitter first.

Because Twitter is for public communications, Knapp always asks customers to contact him by direct message or, Twitter-ese, "DM" with specifics of their concern. That way, customers can provide sensitive information, such as account numbers, privately and safely.

More than 2,000 people now follow Knapp directly, and their posts about BofA_help have reached over 143,000 followers. The Bank's presence on Twitter has received media publicity including from Bank Technology News, which rated Bank of America as "the best bank on Twitter. Visit BofA_help to see the current postings.