This is exactly what our startup does - facilitate the customer service process.

It's amazing how many people have started to use Twitter as their primary source of communication with the companies they do business with. Twitter enforces complaints to be succinct and to the point and since it's asynchronous, you can get on with your day, rather than being on hold with elevator music playing.

And like the author states, it's such an easy win for the company, even if the reply back is "Give me a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX and I'll help out" or "Send me an email at [email protected]".

Customer service over Twitter is an obvious plus. Though I don't think it's possible to achieve anything (At least, anything that involves private/account information, without following/DM-ing), it certainly looks good on the company. When complaining about a problem, even if the response is just "Hi, please send an email to [address]", it shows they are prepared to communicate with their customers.

I also think that the most important part in all of this is the timeliness of their responses. 15 minute responses shows that businesses are investing money into social media by hiring people to watch Twitter feeds or personal handles at all hours of the day.

Also - the author, @lindseyengh, doesn't even have a lot of Twitter followers (153), so it's not like she has the biggest stretch, either. At least on social media, it seems as though companies care about the little guys, too.

I like the idea of using hashtags to amplify one's grievances with a company on twitter. Is there a good way to research appropriate ones, I wonder?

Here at Klout, we're seeing a lot of companies respond to mentioners based on their Klout score.

Do you tweet out their Klout score when it increases? Seems like a smart strategy to get a response.

No, users can send tweets about their score but a lot of businesses use our api to track and organize their incoming requests from social media.