Vegas, baby!
Andrea Harrison, Vice President, Strategy
I use Foursquare and recently I said I’m checking in at the Wynn Encore, and I do my standard “Vegas, baby” comment, and I post it out. Within 30 seconds, I get an @ reply from Wynn Encore on Twitter, saying, “Hey Andrea, welcome to Las Vegas, hope you have a great time, let us know what we can do to help.”

Alternatively if you are managing a brand, you can also set up either Tweetdeck or CoTweet or another search service to alert you when someone mentions your company. This is a quick easy way to view updates from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, Foursquare, and MySpace all from within TweetDeck’s interface.   I’m surprised that every brand is not doing this.

Hot Water
Jenny Arden, Experience Lead
I tweeted to Equinox gyms complaining about the lack of hot water in the showers last winter. I had said something to the front desk but never saw an improvement. I tweeted and received a reply and problem solved. I think the real-time public exposure of customer thoughts, good and bad, makes companies much more proactive.

Feed Me
Chris Boese, Senior Information Architect
I can usually  tell right off if a company is using social monitoring tools on Twitter. How? If you mention a company or brand, even in passing, on Twitter, and within minutes you have a direct reply from a customer service rep or even someone higher up in the company, that’s a good sign. My favorite for responsiveness is feedly, the magazine-style start page and feed reader that’s a Firefox add-on.

Feedly.com is always listening, so if I mention it or bring an issue to their attention, I hear right back. Other brands have done the same, which could feel a little unnerving. Do you really want to hear from a Kleenex service rep responding to an automated bot ping every time you talk about a sad movie?

THE LAME:
Out of Ink
Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy Lead
Sometime this past winter I was having a lot of trouble with an HP photo printer and not getting the help I needed from customer support. Basically, I wasn’t even sure if the problem I was having  was due to the printer being old, if it was the materials, or if there was a flaw with the printer.

I tweeted that I was getting fed up with the printer and someone from an HP Twitter account responded “How can we help?”  I gave a little more detail, and the person suggested I send a message to HPSupport. I tried, but I never heard from any of the HP accounts again.

Airline Frustration
Minora Uchida, Senior Information Architect
I had a horrific time on the phone and email with American Airlines regarding their change fees, and I eventually reached out to the only official Twitter account I could find, @AAirwaves. They responded rather quickly, and asked for my info but eventually sent me back to the same channels I had had no success with. In short, I learned that corporate Twitter accounts are not effective unless they’re managed by people who are authorized to actually cut through BS to directly impact the customer’s issue.

After some repeated requests, they stopped responding to my request on Twitter, too. In their case, the Twitter is used as a promotion channel and only half-heartedly as a customer service tool. My issue was never addressed to my satisfaction, and I moved on, vowing to never fly American again – good luck to me with that.

What have your experiences been tweeting company complaints? Leave a comment and let us know.