Also, if the social commentary is a symptom and a company isn’t considering that symptom when trying to improve their customer service program aren’t they likely more likely to misdiagnose because they have incomplete information?

Dell is actually a very good example right? They built their company on, among others, the strength of their customer service and yet they still ended up with Dell Hell because they ignored the symptoms they were presented with.

To your last point, I agree, if you’re not going to do anything about what you hear then why bother (a curious inversion of your comments on ETP’s blog don’t you think?) My point is that companies should listen so that they can do something.

The Comcast examples seem to indicate that Comcast has an endemic CS issue but that there is one guy out there trying to make a change and rather than just listening to Twitter he’s responding there, publicly, to show that change in Comcast CS group is happening

You’re so willing to start with this as a “given”. Why?

All I’m saying is this: You’re advocating a re-active stance. A customer-centric company is pro-active. They already know the customer, they’re already fixing these things before they are even worth a tweet.

The social commentary is a symptom of a larger problem – a lack of customer-centricity in the first place. I’m suggesting it’s much more efficient to fix the root cause of the problem, rather than chase it all over the web.

Now, if your company is completely incapable of being customer-centric, then fine, “listening” on the web is better than not listening at all. But if you’re not going to do anything about what you hear, then why bother?

Not every person nor company needs to twitter. You first need to analyze if your audience/market/customers are there, and/or if those that influence them are there. If you’re trying to reach senior citizens, twitter isn’t the tool for you.

If the market you’re trying to reach is there, then you should start to experiment, listen in, and prepare to engage.

At the very least (even if your market isn’t there) you should monitor your brand, and those of your competitors using the search tools, such as tweetscan.