In response to Panera Bread’s “EZ Chicken” Twitter campaign, which it was using to promote its antibiotic-free chicken, up-in-arms farmers have launched a Twitter counter-campaign using the hashtag #PluckEZChicken.

Here’s what’s going on.

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As part of a new ad campaign to promote Honda’s summer clearance sales event, the auto company is responding to customer tweets with real-time Vine videos.

Anyone who tweets to @Honda using the hashtag #wantnewcar, a push encouraging customers to swap their old cars for new Hondas, will get a custom Vine video in response.

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In an embarrassing episode picked up by Gizmodo, Bank of America’s customer service Twitter account @BofA_Help made a downright fool of itself – demonstrating exactly how not to conduct customer relations on Twitter.

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Earlier this year, social media analytics specialists Simply Measured conducted an analysis of how Interbrand’s Top 100 Brands were performing customer service on Twitter.

In a time when offering strong social customer service is directly tied to protecting brand identity, what steps are major brands taking to engage with their followers effectively on Twitter?

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As if brands needed another reason to amp up their resources in social customer service: a new infographic from Zendesk posits that more people share their bad customer service experiences on social media than their good experiences (45% vs. 38%).

In addition, a full 88% of survey respondents said that they’d been influenced by online customer service reviews when making buying decisions.

That means that social listening is more critical than ever in managing your brand’s reputation, not to discount traditional customer service efforts.

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Did you know that 56 percent of customers who use social media to interact with an organisation say that they feel a stronger connection with that brand?

Moreover, 50 percent are more likely to buy products or services from a company that they can contact via social media. But firms shouldn’t give up on traditional support methods just yet, as just one in six (16 percent) of customers use Facebook, Twitter and the other major social networks to interact with businesses.

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Customer service is going social. A recent study revealed that 80 percent of companies plan to use social media for customer service by the end of 2012, and 71 percent of users who receive positive customer support through a brand on a social channel go on to recommend them to their friends.

More than 23 million people discovered new brands through social media this year – up from 18 million in 2010 – and 15.1 million refer to social media before making purchase decisions.

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Brand pages and profiles on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become enormously valuable for businesses looking to market products and services, raise awareness, boost website footfall and drive sales, but the two-way nature of social media has also meant that these channels are increasingly being used by consumers for customer support.

Indeed, almost eight out of ten (78 percent) of respondents in a recent survey believe that social media is the future of customer service. But brands still have work to do – another poll revealed that 71 percent of customers never received any kind of response from the company when they complained to them directly on Twitter.

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While almost three-quarters (71.2 percent) of companies use social media for customer support, and 87.5 percent have seen a positive impact from these channels, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are still a small part of the total support structure for business leaders worldwide, reveals a new study.

Sixty percent of companies handle less than 10 percent of customer service issues via social media, with less than one in five (17.7 percent) handling a quarter or more of all support enquiries via these networks.

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Did you know that 58 percent of Twitter users who have tweeted about a bad brand or product experience never receive a response from the offending company?

Social media has changed many things, but it’s perhaps in the field of customer service that the greatest strides have been made. Users are empowered with their own voice, and it’s one that can easily be seen and shared by potentially millions of like-minded customers and fans. In today’s social world, ignoring or downplaying complaints can be a disaster for even the most well-established organisations.

Bottom line: it’s no longer about how fast a business can respond to a customer but how well.

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