The price of Twitter is eternal vigilance

The best thing about social media is they let you have conversations and relationships with customers in real time. That’s also the worst thing about social media.

In April of last year, TechCrunch founder and well-known blogger Michael Arrington found himself trapped at home with a broken internet connection. Every time he called his ISP Comcast, he received a different explanation for the failure: a routing problem, a power failure, a statewide problem. Finally, in exhaustion and exasperation, Arrington snuck onto his neighbour’s Wi-Fi, and sent out the following message on Twitter: “Comcast says it’s California wide. After 30 minutes of hold time and trying to upsell me on some premium cable channel. F**K YOU COMCAST.”

At the time Arrington sent this tweet, he was perhaps the third most popular person on Twitter, with well over 17,000 followers. All of them immediately learned that Comcast had failed Arrington, and all of them would keep that in mind when making a purchasing choice in the future. This sort of customer service cause-and-effect represents the ‘nuclear option’. We’re so well-connected these days (especially with Twitter) that nearly anyone can strike at our reputations. If they’re trusted individuals, like Arrington, they can destroy those reputations.

Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. Twenty minutes after Arrington set off his nuclear bomb, his phone rang. On the other side of the line was a senior manager from Comcast, who had heard of his problem via Twitter and wanted to help him fix it. (And this on a Sunday afternoon.) They worked through the issue and found a solution, leaving Arrington both pleased and amazed at the level of service he received from a company he’d so recently bombed.

Lest you believe this a special service accorded only to VIPs, another gentleman, Josh Lowenson, a self-confessed “internet nobody”, complained via Twitter about his troubles setting up his Comcast cable modem. Again another phone call from a Comcast employee, and again another problem solved. That’s two happy customers, both of whom shared the love about Comcast across Twitter.

Because it is possible to search Twitter for your company or your brand, you can know what’s being said about your company and your brand in real-time.

In fact, you must know what’s being said about your brands all the time. You can’t let bombs go off in the Twitterverse and leave them unanswered. If your customers are going nuclear, that’s not just their problem – it’s yours as well.

Every one of your other customers – and all of your potential customers – will be reading the same angry messages.

Social media has been promoted as a great way to establish close relationships with your customers. That’s true enough, but less than half the story. Social media comes at a price: eternal vigilance.

Every company dipping into social media has to think hard about the kind of resources they’ll need to allocate. Are you prepared to keep one eye on Twitter, another on Facebook, and a third on the bulletin boards covering every area of relevance? You’ll need to. #

Mark Pesce is a tech futurist and pannelist on the ABC's New Inventors