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Throughout history, people have complained about the companies they do business with. Until the Internet came along, those gripes were directed at small groups of family, friends and co-workers.

But e-mail, discussion forums, blogs and social networks have created a world where a once relatively harmless rant can do serious damage to a company and its reputation. Unhappy customers can, quite literally, broadcast their irritation to the world. It’s a fact that’s forcing some rather significant changes in the way many companies — including Dell, Coca Cola, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Charter Communications — are approaching customer service.

No longer is it enough to staff a call center and wait for customers to complain or ask for help. The smart companies, experts say, are the ones using social media to reach out to customers — particularly those who are unhappy and vocal about it.

"Those who wish it away and who think it’s just a fad — those are the ones who are going to be caught flat-footed and run over," said Steve Rosa, chief executive officer of (add)ventures, a Providence, R.I.-based marketing firm.
Of particular interest these days to companies is Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site that allows users to communicate instantly, on their computers or cell phones, in 140-character messages, referred to as Tweets.

In August of last year, the service had 2.3 million unique visitors. A year later, the number had surged to 24.6 million, according to Nielsen Online.

And although Twitter itself hasn’t yet found a way to turn a profit, companies both large and small are finding uses for it. Some of them even make money. Dell, for example, announced earlier this summer that it has raked in some $3 million in sales directly related to its Twitter efforts. That’s not a lot for one of the world’s top computer makers — with more than $12 billion in annual revenue — but it does demonstrate potential.

Others, such as Progress West HealthCare Center in O’Fallon, Mo. are using it to communicate quickly with customers or, in this case, patients. The facility’s emergency room tweeted every couple of hours with updates on expected wait times. Emergency room staffers also use the Twitter feed to send notes to patients and are starting to answer questions. But the emphasis, at least for now, is on managing patient expectations, said Paula Szwargulski, manager of the emergency department.

"People expect to wait. But if they know how long they’ll have to wait and why they’ll have to wait, it’s not as painful," Szwargulski said.

More companies, however, are employing Twitter to put out fires before they have a chance to spread.

That’s what Michael Tomko of St. Louis learned earlier this summer when he complained on Twitter about a bill from Town and Country-based Charter for his phone service. He was annoyed by a range of fees and regulatory charges.

The brief rant caught the attention of Charter’s social media team, a group of five men charged with monitoring Internet traffic — Twitter, Facebook, blogs, discussion forums and consumer sites — for just that sort of thing. A rapid response quickly blunted Tomko’s anger.

"They could have gotten defensive. Instead, they wanted to know what was going on," Tomko said. "It felt like a real person talking to me."

The encounter offered Tomko a way to vent payday loan lenders. He still canceled the phone service. But it turned him into a fan of Charter’s social media initiative, which has eliminated a source of irritation — the phone call-in center. Now he says all of his dealings with the company start with Twitter and the Umatter2Charter group.

"I’m not proclaiming that Charter is fixed," Tomko said. "But I’m saying there is a team of like five guys who are doing it right."

The company is quick to point out that the social media approach won’t subtract anything from other service avenues. And it should be noted that the five teammates — they’ve assisted some 7,000 customers this year — represent a tiny piece of Charter’s customer service operation, which deals with millions of calls annually.

But one thing it does seem to do is provide some customers with a more personalized touch. Each of the five social media guys has his own Twitter page, complete with name and photo.

Customers can essentially decide whom they’d like to talk to. That’s the thing that makes it work for Alexander Chow-Stuart, an author and screenwriter who lives in Woodland Hills, Calif.

"We’re on a first-name basis," Chow-Stuart said. "But when you call, you get a different person every time."

Although Charter has been increasing its involvement in social media — the company hired its first team member in January — it certainly wasn’t the first to go this route. But in recent months, the team has noticed a shift in customer attitude that should probably scare any company not active in this sphere.

In the early days, a customer ranting about Charter on his Twitter feed would express surprise when someone from Charter reached out to help. But those reactions are growing rare, said Eric Ketzer, communication manager for the social media team.

"We don’t have the shock-and-awe responses we used to get," Ketzer said. "So many companies are on Twitter now that they’re just kind of used to it."

That raises a couple of issues for companies who haven’t spent much time thinking about their online reputations.

The first is simply a lost opportunity, said Lorrie Thomas, a Web marketing expert who teaches social media at the University of California, Berkley.

She compares Twitter to a focus group. It’s just a lot bigger and free: "You are getting truly authentic messages. You can watch real, live conversations happening."

More importantly, she said, those companies aren’t doing enough to protect their image in an arena where attendance is expected.

"There are organizations that are completely behind," she said. "If you don’t build your brand, someone else will do it for you."

The challenge facing some companies, however, is convincing profit-oriented chief executives to invest money in an area without being able to promise a monetary return, said Chad Mitchell, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. It doesn’t help that the companies having the most success aren’t eager to share their expertise, out of fear of helping competitors, he said.

"How are you making money with this? That’s hard to measure," Mitchell said.

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