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From author Jeanette Joy Fisher

Please give me a minute to tell you a story…

We recently purchased a home pool heater so I can swim much needed laps. It gets cold in Southern California every night. No one wants to swim in a cold pool, especially me. After four plus years of tweeting my heart out, I need exercise. I love to swim and I am up to 50 laps from 10. Except, many days I can’t stand the cold.

The pool heater was put in in March. It worked ONE day. After many failed attempts to enter my complaint on the manufacturer’s website, I gave up and posted a complaint on Twitter. If the company would have followed me back, as I first requested nicely, I would have Direct Messaged them and no one would have seen the complaint. As it was, my friends immediately took up my cause. I even blogged about my family’s misery.

From Pete Bradshaw’s website http://www.tell3000.com featuring his book:

Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World

“In today’s Internet-driven world, customers h­ave­ m­o­r­e­ p­ower ­than ever. Through what interactive marke­ting ­expert Pete Bla­ckshaw­ calls “consumer-­generated media”—blogs, soci­al networking pages, message boards, product review site­s—ev­en a single disgruntled cus­tomer can broadc­ast his com­plaints to an audience of millions. ”

(I’d put an affiliate link here to Pete Bradshaw’s book, but Governor Jerry Brown caused Amazon to fire California based affiliates, which could really hurt many widows like me. So, here’s the direct link: http://amzn.to/poGiso)

It took until mid August for the manufacturer to replace the heater. It worked ONE day.

I’ll bet that with over 100,000 Twitter followers and staunch friends with even more followers, I can reach more than 3,000 people.

I prefer telling you how much I love @JetBlue, my Ford Mustang GT, my GMC truck, and about other companies who treat me right.

What is the biggest mistake businesses make on Twitter? 

They believe they are better than their customers and want customers to be fans of their magnificent tweet stream where they post self-serving links.

Savvy companies know how to Tweet Me Nice. They…

1. Follow back automatically so we can DM immediately
2. Engage in conversations related to their products
3. DM people who complain to take the problem out of the mainstream
4. DM telephone contact or email address… not some form to fill in online that doesn’t work
5. Monitor their Twitter accounts on weekends to head off problems like me who wanted to know how to turn on my pool heater on Saturday morning for a big Twitter party (2 times!) and family reunion with Facebook fanatics attending

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