Twitter customer service can be customer service at its best, what it should be and stopped being years ago. It can be personal, real-time, proactive and, best of all, effective.

I see some companies who standout. They not only respond when directly contacted (@ed on Twitter). They monitor Twitter for mentions of their company, and they respond anytime someone mentions them by name. Beyond all of that, and read this carefully because this is the crucial element, they make things happen and address or fix the issue quickly.

One example was @shoebuy. I had a gift certificate to Shoebuy.com and it was about a week before a conference when I remembered that. I went there to get some shoes, and I saw no option to get them overnighted. I tweeted about it and didn’t even realize they were on Twitter, so I didn’t say with their @ in the tweet. Within seconds, yes seconds, two different Shoebuy employees on Twitter responded that they could overnight certain brands. It wasn’t easy to determine which brands, so they sent me a link to a full list.

Within an hour, I had ordered my shoes and they arrived the next day. Without that Twitter intervention, I would have been annoyed with Shoebuy and I would not have placed the order at all. I also would have likely told people about this bad experience. Now I can rave about the company. (Like now.)

Many times, however, I see companies doing it wrong. This not only means the resources they are putting into Twitter are wasted, but they are probably causing more damage than good.

Here are what I will describe as the five bad customer service types.

The Retro Customer Service Tweeter

I sent @wachovia a DM this morning asking about an issue with my account. Their response was to call their 800 number. Ummm, why are you on Twitter exactly? I get there are privacy issues, but there are ways to share information via DM that would not be a problem.

If we wanted to endure an 800 number, wait on hold, argue and cajole to get a straight answer, get accidentally knocked off the line, call back and start over… well, we aren’t idiots. Anyone who is on Twitter is surely capable of looking up your toll-free number. We are contacting you on Twitter specifically because we want to avoid all of that. Phone customer service sucks 99.99999 percent of the time (yeah, that’s a real statistic). We despise it.

You can get a monkey to DM people 800 numbers, but I would prefer you hire a savvy human who can contact the right people and fix the issue.

The Multiple Personality Customer Service Tweeter

It is perfectly fine (in fact, wonderful) to have several people within the company and/or on behalf of the company on Twitter. In fact, as my example above shows with @shoebuy, it wasn’t even the official account that contacted me. What is not OK is not clearly specifying which Twitter account is the official one, or the one designated to handle customer service complaints.

We get that you can’t have one human monitoring your account 24/7. But there are ways to handle that. Say in your bio or your background who the various people are. If you want to be personal, have them sign their tweets with -firstname or -initials. But just look at @ umatter2charter! This is one. hot. mess!

Twice, I have contacted Charter. Twice I’ve gone at least a day or two because I didn’t properly decipher which of their five (yes FIVE) Twitter customer service accounts was on at that moment. Kudos to them for responding when they get it or make sense of it. But having one account with multiple users would be so much clearer.

As it is now, this is reducing their effectiveness and confusing/irritating their customers on Twitter. It’s also clearly slowing their response time. Beyond that, this will be hard for them to reverse if customers are following or accustomed to tweeting one of the five accounts.

The Oblivious Customer Service Tweeter

First, let me say not being on Twitter is a major fail these days. A year ago, it was no big deal. Today, especially for a major corporation, it is glaring. But it’s possible to be on Twitter and be just as distant to the community as one who is missing. Where is Apple? Seriously. And @ itunesmusic is the epitome of the blind Twitter account.

Here are some warning signs of an oblivious tweeter:

• They don’t follow anyone. (Here’s a hint: when you do that, no one can DM you. So they can only complain @ you publicly. You know, where everyone sees it. Mmm-hmmm.)
• They don’t reply to anyone.
• They do nothing but self-promote and sell.

The Two-Faced Customer Service Tweeter

Twice, I complained about AT&T on Twitter. OK, way more than twice, but they acknowledged it twice. They replied publicly and in DM. They asked for my email address, and said the matter would be addressed and someone would be in touch. Twice, I never heard a word.

Whether intentional or just a case of it falling through the cracks, this is shady. Publicly, it saves face. The company looks responsive. But believe me, I have since tweeted that this happened. And now I am blogging about it.

If you say you will help, do it. At least try. Believe me, we don’t forget.

The Good News Customer Service Tweeter

This is a variation of the Oblivious Tweeter above, but an equally annoying one. They are more than happy to chit chat, and to retweet when someone raves about their company. They think contests asking people to follow them to enter is engagement. They think churning out coupons is enough.

But if someone complains on Twitter, they disappear. Or DM and want it taken offline. If you are a company on Twitter, you have to take the good and the bad. You have to address the good and the bad. There are positives to even the most negative tweets. Twitter is a great big free focus group. You should listen. The feedback could be valuable.

Plus, back to @shoebuy, they quickly turned a negative into a positive. That is what people tend to remember. If you respond, that is.

What do you think? Do you have an experience with a company on Twitter that did it just right… or just wrong? I’d love to hear about it.

_{Customer service illustration based on photo © Ray Smithers.}