Twitter rolls out new features that provides users more options to get in touch with businesses.

Customer Support Tag

The micro-blogging portal now allows businesses to designate Twitter accounts that provide customer support. One of the new features tags the designated customer service accounts with "Provides support," which makes it easier for users to identify which of the company's account can be asked for assistance and receive inquiries and complaints.

The tag will appear together with the account name in the users' search results. It also appears in the suggestions when composing tweets that mention the account username or ones that are relevant to it. This can be quite helpful for companies that are using multiple Twitter accounts since it prevents user confusion and identifies which of the accounts users can address the tweet to.

Direct Messages And Bigger Messages Button

Aside from the customer support tag, another new feature is direct messages. The feature, when enabled, allows an account to receive messages from everyone on Twitter. This works even if the sender is not followed by the support account.

In line with the direct messages feature, Twitter also scaled up the "Message" button for customer support accounts. This is especially noticeable for mobile users. Prior to the changes, the Message button was placed beside the "Tweet to" button. With the new layout, however, the Message button now takes up the entire space.

Note that the enlarged button was released a few weeks prior to the new features. It was spotted on support accounts such as @AppleSupport, @BeatsSupport, @Uber_Support and so on.

However, Twitter, at that time, did not release any statement on why it decided to do so for such accounts. Now we know what the enlarged Message button is for.

Some comment that this is to encourage users to chat with the customer support in private instead of publicly tweeting their inquiries or complaints.

Support Hours

Another feature for designated customer support accounts is the ability to specify hours on which customers can get a hold of them easily. In the Twitter dashboard, under settings for support hours, businesses can choose between 24/7 or more specific hours and days on which the customer support is most responsive.

It also provides the basic timezone options.

Once specified, the support hours will appear above the "Tweet to" and "Message" buttons and below the "joined" date/url/address for web. For mobile, it will appear above the enlarged Message button and below the physical and web address.