Wonderful little tale about how online social media can help you reach out to your customers and provide a fuller customer service experience. One of us has a Twitter (apart from BizBox's Twitter), and there wrote a tweet about some problems we were having with our personal blog, which is hosted by TypePad. You know, just your run-of-the-mill complaint, for which Twitter's 140-character maximum template is perfectly suited.

Then, not long after, this appeared in our email inbox:

From: G--- W---- <------@sixapart.com>
Hi there:

I saw a Tweet from you saying you were having trouble with TypePad ­ we had a short problem today but we should be back up and running now. You can always check status.sixapart.com for more information, too! Please let me know if you have any other questions.

G--- W----
TypePad Community Manager
Six Apart

A couple back-and-forths later, and the problem was solved.

Props to TypePad. Note how the customer--that would be one of us--was able to get superior service without even having to seek it out. New Web 2.0 technologies and products allow such things, but only if you take full advantage of them.