Get a Word in Edgewise: Post Character Limit and Social Media-Based Customer Service

Abstract

In this paper, we study the role of extending character limits on firm responses on social media. By leveraging a natural experiment setting: the unexpected increase in post character limit on Twitter, we empirically investigate the impact on the linguistic styles of social media-based customer service responses. Using a Regression Discontinuity in Time Design and leveraging a panel dataset, our results suggest that extending character limits influences firm to change the linguistic styles in their responses which could influence consumers' perceptions. Our results show that extending post-character limits significantly reduces the readability ease of firm responses, on average, while increasing the concreteness and personal closeness scores of these responses, on average. We show that these changes were effective in influencing customer satisfaction.