Why aren't more companies paying attention to how Twitter is changing customer service?

From January of 2009 to March of 2009, Twitter grew from 6 million unique visitors to over 14 million. It is one of the fastest growing social media sites, and while its userbase is low compared to a behemoth like Facebook, it is rapidly changing the current landscape and expectations for customer service. Forward-thinking companies like Whole Foods, JetBlue, and Zappos.com realize the magnitude and impact a single problem resolution can have on their company's image, and this is magnified on a site like Twitter.

Take the modern call-center. Generally, it's a farm of Customer Service Reps answering phone calls from (more often than not) angry or upset customers. Each CSR tries to resolve the problem as quickly and satisfactorily as possible. At its core, the motivation for solving a customer complaint is three-fold:

3) Don't lose the customer
2) Encourage positive word of mouth
1) Avoid negative word of mouth

While the customer himself might like to think that #3 is the primary motivation of the company when resolving the complaint, it is a very small piece. Someone who has a positive experience with a company maybe tells a few other people about it. A person that has a negative experience with a company generally tells more than a few other people about it. If a person *really* wants to spread the word about their bad experience, they can call 20 of their friends, but that's a lot of effort. But what if these 20 friends were in the room with you already? What if it were a 100? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? More?? Therein lies the power of customer service resolution via Twitter. Any major company that does not have someone monitoring what people are tweeting about their company is making a huge mistake.

I'd love to see some metrics on average followers for active users of Twitter and how many people a typical complaint would reach. And if that complaint was properly resolved, how many would a happy customer's tweet reach? Put that up against the typical call center tell-your-friends ratio, and I'd bet the Twitter customer service get a heck of a lot more bang for the buck.

What do you think?