The purpose of that post was to point out my belief that the average Joe or Jane would not have received the same attention from Southwest or the media had they tweeted a similar issue.

Well I am sitting here today in front of my computer with a little bit of egg on my face.

You see yesterday started off on the wrong foot for me. I was woken up by my phone ringing and my teen-age daughter on the other end informing me that she had missed the bus.  This meant I would have to get out of my perfectly warm bed earlier then I wanted to and take her to school.  Not an absolutely horrible thing…any alone time with your kid is always a good thing.

Once I returned to my home office I went through my normal routine (coffee – check, muffin – check, feed the cats – check ….. ) and started my day reading through everything I missed while I slept.  Around 9:30 a.m. I picked up my phone to call a client…. and nothing … total dead silence.

Ok…not a big deal – check the phone, check all the other phones that are on this line, no problems.  Since I am on DSL – I was slightly confused how my internet could be working but yet no dial tone.  So I reluctantly decided I would have to call into CenturyLink’s customer service and report the problem.

After about 5 minutes of being routed through their automated service network I was informed by a computer to first “Unplug every device that was contacted to the phone line, this includes all phones, caller ID boxes, cable/satellite boxes, computer and answering machines.  Then wait 3 to 5 minutes and then plug everything back in.  If this does not solve your problem please call back.”

Well dang – what a pain.  But I did it and yup you guessed it – still no dial tone. So back on my cell I go and I begin to navigate the auto-service menus – this time a little faster because I had been here once before already.

As I was doing this I decided to tweet a little comment about what was happening.

Is lost in the land of customer no-service at #CenturyLink. Currently wandering the halls of their automated customer no-service labyrinth.

Partially because I was frustrated, a little bit tongue and cheek, but I also wanted to see if I would get a response from anyone.

A little over 3 hours later what do I see in my DM box…

@TommyD69 Saw your tweet. I’ll be glad to help. Can you follow me and DM your account info/details of the issue?

I was impressed.  You see I am not an “influencer” like a Kevin Smith but it was nice to see a company, one I rely on to conduct my business every day, actually have a plan in place and is actively engaging with their customer base to resolve issues in a proactive manner.

So here I sit, corrected for the most part.  We as consumers can get the attention of companies we do business with simply by engaging them through mediums like Twitter.  Provided they have the foresight to be doing the same.

Congrats CenturyLink…on a job well done in this case.

By the way…in case you were wondering – the phone issue was a system wide outage in my area.  So large was the outage that once basic phone service was restored, the county’s 911 emergency service called every county resident to inform them that the 911 system was affected by the outage and gave everyone alternative numbers to call in case of an emergency.

And just as Cord doesn’t want to debate who is right or who is wrong I don’t either  (if you need the details of the incident you can catch up at Gawker.) I don’t even want to debate Cord’s point on how well Southwest handled this social media conversation and how all companies need to learn from them – mostly because I agree with him and I this would be repetitious.

But what I would like to do is ask this question:

Had it been an average Joe, someone like me with only a handful of Twitter followers compared to Kevin Smith, would this have even made the Podunk County News?

My answer is no.  Not in million years. And to be honest I would not expect it to.

I do not have the influence on the magnitude of a Kevin Smith.  But I can bet you a $100 dollars that had I tweeted the same experience – I never would have heard a “peep” from Southwest. Even if I blogged about it I can almost guarantee it would have fallen on deaf ears.  Maybe if I called Live at 5…Southwest might have at least sent me a form letter expressing their regret and offering me a voucher to get on the plane first next time I flew.

I hate to lump all of corporate businesses into the same pile but more often than not the average consumer will not get this type of response from a social media slap.  There are sites dedicated to exposing companies and their inability to provide customer service but with the exception of the occasional 60 Minute undercover story the major majority go unheard.

My point here is – as great as it was that Kevin Smith let the world know about a poor decision by a Southwest employee and as refreshing it was to see Southwest come out of the gate and engage in way that was real – there is a HUGE gap between those that can and those that can’t.

I hope that Southwest and other companies are beginning to engage in practices that not only address the big media moment of the day but look after the issues that are voiced by the thousands of us who actually fill their bottom line.