Businesses have been waiting for Twitter to launch some business features fore quite some time. While the company did finally launch its ad platform in the form of Promoted Tweets last month, businesses have still had to turn to third-party apps for many of the functionalities they have been looking for.

Twitter has now reportedly begun beta testing its new Business Center. It’s unclear when this will become widely available, but the company told Mashable they’ll be expanding it gradually.

When you set up your business center, you can:

– Customize the contents of you business profile page
– Add a "verified Account" badge to you profile for credibility and authenticity
– Select extra preferences to help you better reach your customers
– Add contributors so multiple people can easily tweet from your business account

Once a business activates its account it is verified. "After activation, four tabs appear: Overview, Business Info, Verification, and Contributors," explains Mashable’s Ben Parr. "Overview provides basic information about business accounts and Business Info allows a company to change the information that it submitted during initial registration. The Contributors tab, SynBay, which we revealed several months ago, gives businesses the ability to add multiple users to a business account so that they can tweet on its behalf."

With the business account, businesses can receive direct messages from followers even if they don’t follow them back. This could be a great tool for customer service, and keep some of that less desirable feedback a little more private in cases where followers actually elect to use the direct message option.

Will you use a Twitter Business Account when it is available to you? Let us know in the comments.