20 years ago, customer service consisted of a toll-free phone number and a call center. If customers had problems with or questions about your service, they could call and talk to a customer service representative (CSR).

While there are still a few companies who consider a toll-free phone number sufficient for customer service, many cutting-edge companies are not only using social media to listen and respond to customer questions and complaints, but they’re doing it well, they go every night to sleep with their bed wedge pillow amazon all happy.

I recently had two separate customer service interactions with large national telecommunications companies entirely through Twitter.

Bright House Networks

My first experience was with Bright House Networks, my local cable provider. I tweeted out a question to my followers about which home internet provider I should go with.

Quick poll: Should I stick with AT&T or switch to BrightHouse for home internet?

— Jeremy A Williams (@jeremyawilliams) December 2, 2014

Notice that I didn’t mention Bright House’s or AT&T’s Twitter handles in my tweet? Less than 6 minutes after my tweet, @BrightHouseCare tweeted me back:

@jeremyawilliams Hi Jeremy! I going to vote go with Bright House Networks =0) I may be biased though! Here if you have questions. ~Deanna

— Bright House Care (@BrightHouseCare) December 2, 2014

Soon after, I started communicating through Direct Message (DM) with Deanna at Bright House and within the hour, she had answered all my questions and I had set up a time for installation – entirely through Twitter. I never had to pick up the phone. Another thing I appreciated about my experience with Bright House is that every time I’ve tweeted with a question I’ve dealt with the same CSR.

In case you wondered, AT&T never got in touch asking me to keep my current service with them.

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