Is Twitter about to grow up as a customer service channel?

Yesterday I read a really interesting article on Mashable: Twitter Begins Allowing Direct Messages With Verified Accounts Sans Following Back.

The original article was from The Next Web in Twitter drops following requirement for Direct Messages on Verified Accounts.

There’s been a lot of talk about how Twitter can be an effective customer service channel but some of the functionality and flexibility has hindered that for many. However, the functionality is changing. Could this mean that Twitter is about to grow up as a customer service channel?

There seems to be a lot of reaction to this news. Some good. Some bad. Some mixed.

There also doesn’t seem to have been any official announcement from Twitter as yet. Maybe this is just feature development.

However, Mashable did report last year that Twitter was working on new features for businesses. One of them was a feature that would allow businesses the ability to receive Direct Messages without having to follow the user back (that’s what normally happens).

This is a feature that you can turn on or off and seems to be starting to emerge as Tata DOCOMO, an Indian mobile operator, recently tweeted the following:

I think this is, potentially, a great development for brands on Twitter as it will allow the brand in question and the customer to take issues private without having to follow another Twitter user and without washing any ‘laundry’ in public.

I hope this reduces some of the customer service noise that exists on Twitter right now. And, further hope, that this may, in fact, attract more customers and brands onto Twitter as a customer service platform.

If you are brand with a verified account. Are you going to turn the feature on or off?

Thanks to opensourceway for the image.