I'm David Eckoff. I'm on a mission to help businesses in Virginia-Highland use social media and technology to connect with customers and grow their businesses.

This week we'll explore how you can use social media for real-time customer service. We'll draw on lessons learned from local restaurant Yeah! Burger; and from subject matter experts who I spoke with at the SXSW Interactive conference.

You Can't Buy Customer Loyalty

How does a business create loyal customers?

"You can't buy customer loyalty," Kimarie Matthews, vice president of social Web at Wells Fargo said at a SXSW Interactive session on social media and customer support. "It comes from showing that you're there and you care."

This observation made me think of an experience I had last year with a local restaurant that shows a powerful approach to using Twitter for business.

From Cranky Customer to Raving Fan

On a beautiful spring day in June 2010, I was meeting friends for dinner at Yeah! Burger's new Howell Mill Road restaurant. My first experience at the burger joint was circling the restaurant for 30 minutes to find a place to park. Followed by waiting in a long line to place my order.

I was hungry. I was annoyed. And I vented on Twitter via my mobile phone: "@YeahBurger, my first visit, and we're not off to a good start."

No sooner had I tweeted, the line moved quickly. I ordered food. And joined my friends on the patio. With a burger and milkshake in hand, the earlier negative experience melted away.

And then something strange occurred.

The restaurant manager came out to the patio and scanned the crowd as if looking for one particular person. When he saw me, he made a beeline for our table and said with a worried look on his face, "Mr. Eckoff! What seems to be the problem and how can we make it right for you?"

At first I wasn't sure how he knew my name. Or why he was asking me these questions.

The manager explained: the owner of the restaurant was at home and saw my tweet. He had called the manager and directed him to look up my photo on Twitter, locate me immediately, find out what had happened and make it right.

That was a "wow" moment.

I'd seen businesses use Twitter for customer service, but I had never seen anyone use Twitter for real-time customer service.

The fact that Yeah! Burger cared so much about my customer experience that they monitored Twitter real-time and took immediate action to talk with me won me over.

I started as a cranky customer. And that experience transformed me into a raving fan. When Yeah! Burger opened its new location in Virginia-Highland, I was the very first customer.

How to Win Friends and Influence Customers

Erik Maier, managing partner at Yeah! Burger, remembers that as the first time his business tried proactive customer service using Twitter.

"We had an interest in knowing what people are saying about us in real-time," Maier told me last week. "But you were the first. Your response that you appreciated that we came and found you set the precedent."

How did Maier's management team do it?

"We installed an app on our iPhones called Twitbit, which pushes notifications to our managers whenever someone mentions our Twitter name," Maier said. "We knew people would be mentioning us on Twitter and we wanted to know immediately if there were any problems."

Maier says there aren't many customer complaints on Twitter to address, maybe one every couple of weeks. But this approach enables Yeah! Burger to win friends.

"Last night a woman tweeted that food was taking longer to get than she liked," Maier said. "I immediately replied to her on Twitter and asked her what location she was at and suggested she ask for a manager to discuss."

What did she think about this real-time customer service?

"I loved their fast response," Midtown resident Angie Funtanilla told me via Twitter. "I was very surprised. Good service!!"

Advice for Small Businesses

Matthews of Wells Fargo said proactive customer service is about listening to customers.

"As a small business, it's about having someone listen and acknowledge," Matthews said at SXSW. "A lot of time people just want to be acknowledged."

But if you're going to contact customers via social media, you better solve their problems.

Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist at Temkin Group, said the stakes are high.

"If you reach out to someone who isn't expecting it and it doesn't solve the problem, that's even worse," Tempkin said at SXSW.

He also cautions against using social media to dress up poor customer experience in other areas and cites Comcast as being horrible in this regard.

"The mistake Comcast makes is to believe that there's some way in social media to put frosting on a really disgusting cake and make it taste good," Tempkin said.

In the day to day challenge of dealing with customer service issues it's easy to forget the simple fact that the best customer experience is to have no problem at all.

"At the high end of proactive support, you're seeking and destroying problems before customers even have them," Tempkin said. "So the best proactive support is when no one tweets about it, no one runs into a problem, customers just have their normal activity happen."

It Comes Down to This

Why don't more businesses use Twitter for real-time customer service?

"I think some businesses see Facebook and Twitter as a necessary evil," Maier of Yeah! Burger told me. "We see social media as a primary interaction between us and customers. We've embraced it. It all comes down to if you like interacting with your customers."

The bottom line: Use social media for real-time customer service and transform unhappy customers into raving fans. But remember that the ultimate goal is a great customer experience that requires no extra customer service.

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