Early in the Summer, one of our pipes sprang a leak late at night. I tweeted about it and minutes later, got a reply from a local plumbing company offering to help me. When I flew to Israel a couple of months ago, I tweeted to my followers that the plane had landed. And later that day, I received a reply from a local car hire company suggesting I take a look at their online offers….I ended up booking a car with them. 

The beauty of Twitter is that it enables you to track the people who need your products and services whereas in the past you had to go out and find them either by advertising or by making sales calls. And it’s so easy. By using tools such as www.tweetdeck.com or www.hootsuite.com , you can create a list of keywords related to your business and be alerted when people mention those keywords in their Tweets.  

Earlier this year, the web hosting for one of my websites failed. I called the hosting company and they promised me  they would sort things out, but hours passed without anything happening. Then I complained about the company on Twitter. Within minutes, someone from the hosting company called me to sort things out. And they kept calling me even after the problem was resolved to check that I was happy.

And why do you think the response was so speedy?  It’s very simple. When you say something on Twitter, everyboy can read about it, both your target customers, and your competitors. And in reponse to this, more and more companies have a dedicated Twitter based customer service.