A great post on customer service and social media. Thought this was a powerful idea.

Customer service performance constitutes one of the key dimensions of brand health, and directly impacts customer acquisition, share of wallet and loyalty. Gauging customer service performance used to require private feedback loops with an inherent time lag. But those days are gone. Today, customers tweet publicly and instantaneously about customer service experiences they have in any channel (in-person, phone, email, online and social media. They are also brutally honest about their feelings. Unlike traditional surveys that poll a consumer’s service experience and include a spectrum of satisfaction, tweets are predominantly binary and convey either highly positive or negative emotional views. Analyzing these posts unveils a simple and transparent barometer for how your company’s customer service is doing across the board. The Customer Service Sentiment (CSS) score, developed by NM Incite, gives companies a score that reflects the level of positive sentiment customers have toward that company’s customer service efforts. The higher the score, the more satisfied the customers are with their experiences.