Just Tweet It!

No, this isn't going to be a navel-gazer, or a post trying to persuade everyone to Tweet. Quite frankly, if you don't have anything to sell, I can see little point.
That was until the other day, when I solved a rather annoying customer service problem by Tweeting. I won't name the company but they'd sent me a defective product. I e-mailed them asking for another or asking what to do. I got a lovely robot e-mail back promising a reply in a few days, but they failed to deliver. Following week I sent another e-mail. Same result. Said company's web site didn't give a phone number. (Isn't that against the law?) Sleuth that I am, I did an Internet search and found the number on a review site. Called them. Of course there wasn't a live person on the other end, but Mrs. Voice-over promised the same kind of speedy customer service if I'd leave my name and phone number.  Still nothing.
So I Tweeted my dissatisfaction. Named names I did.
"What does it take to get a reply from Company A?" #crapcustomerservice", I tweeted.
Within minutes someone direct messaged me and asked about the problem. That night they even phoned to tell me how they were solving my problem. Brilliant.
Apparently Tweeting companies into action is becoming very popular. This recent story from Australia is a corker and should be a warning to any company daring to advertise one thing and deliver quite the opposite.
If you are going to resort to Twitter, obviously you first have to have an account. It's really easy to sign up and you don't have to Tweet much if you don't want to. Second - don't just Tweet about the company; do a search to see if the company has a Twitter account and if it does, use the handle (which would be @Xcompany) in your mini-rant. That way it will be flagged up to them almost like a message or an e-mail. Apparently some companies have employees who watch social media feedback all day.
Bear in mind that you are still limited as far as characters you can type, but in my experience, they will then be able to establish the basis of your problem, seek out your original e-mails or (if you're really lucky) give you a call.
Worth a try, and boy do they hate bad word-of-mouth!