Sarah Wurrey, Bill Sledzik, and Jennifer Zingsheim questioned the longtime viability of customer support outreach on the latest episode of the Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable. I’ve read many of these issues before on various blogs, but I don’t think they’ll keep companies from continuing to adopt this approach.

Adobe has engaged in customer outreach for years, trolling message boards in the days before social media looking for opportunities to solve problems with their products about which customers were writing. Dell, as part of its reinvigorated customer focus, inaugurated a team doing pretty much the same thing. But it’s Comcast’s outreach through Twitter that has captured a lot of attention. (If you haven’t heard C.C. Chapman detail his own experience with Comcast’s Twitter guy, Frank Eliason, you can find it here.) Southwest Airlines has followed suit.

Let’s look at the reasons the Media Bullseye panel—and others—worry that this approach isn’t sustainable or could backfire:

Companies won’t be able to keep up as more and more people begin looking for help through these channels.

There are two good reasons this shouldn’t happen. First, as outreach begins to reduce the number of calls coming into the call center, companies should be able to reallocate call center resources to outreach efforts. A typical call-center interaction costs anywhere from $3 to $25, depending on who you talk to. As more and more problems and addressed through outreach, those costs will drop and the money easily reinvested in boosting the number of people who respond to blog and message board posts and tweets.

You can get away without spending any money, though, if you begin to view your overall employee population as the front line of customer support. I’ve experienced this a few times from companies ranging from Microsoft to Park ‘N Fly. It wasn’t a dedicated support person who reached out to me after I wrote about a less-than-satisfcatory customer experience. In the case of Park ‘N Fly, it was an admin. With Microsoft, it was first IE Project Manager Dean Hachamovich, followed by a member of his team. Given that the Edelman Trust Barometer identifies “a person like me” as the most trusted spokesperson for a company, letting employees find issues related to their work and resolve them as a supplement to more formal efforts will make it even easier for companies to keep up.

Greedy and unscrupulous people will game the system

If Southwest satisfies an unhappy customer by giving him a free round-trip, a lot of people will be inclined to post their own tweets claiming to have had a bad experience on a recent flight in hopes of scoring a voucher of their own. But not if they don’t know that a free ticket was awarded.

A variety of companies have reached out to me after I’ve aired my dissatisfaction on my blog. Park ‘N Fly and Microsoft, listed above, responded by commenting on my blog. Marriott, Virgin Mobile, and Wachovia Bank, on the other hand, responded by private email. Offers of free goods or services to compensate for a problem can easily be made through one-to-one contact (or even the direct message feature on Twitter), which would help avoid the flood of people with their hands out.

Only those with influence will get on customer support’s radar screen.

Jeff Jarvis got Dell’s attention because, well, he’s Jeff Jarvis, A-list blogger. Members of the Media Bullseye panel noted that they had blogged their problems with products and received no attention from the company in question, presumably because they’re not well known enough to be on the company’s radar.

My guess is that the companies in question weren’t searching the Web to find customers with problems. In most of the cases when companies have reached out to me, they had no idea who I was. Comcast is clearly reaching out to anybody who tweets an issue. Smart companies will try to solve anyone’s problem and not discriminate in favor of the influential.

Frankly, most of the people who reached out to me had no idea who I was (not that I’m an influential blogger to begin with).

It’s not fair that only those who use Twitter and other social media channels will be able to take advantage of customer suport outreach.

People who don’t blog or use Twitter can always pick up a phone. Outreach is an extension of existing customer service channels, not a replacement that leaves others without a means of having their problems addressed.

The concern sounds a lot like companies reluctant to launch intranets 10 years ago because some employees didn’t work at computers. Ultimately, organizations recognized that intranets would serve employees who could use them and other tools would serve those who couldn’t. Is customer support outreach really any different?

Those who complain on their blogs are just a bunch of whiners anyway. Why should organizations succumb to them?

I’ve been accused of this—recently. But take a look at the title of Pete Blackshaw‘s new book (due in July): “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.” People have always shared their experiences along with their ideas and insights. Social media simply gives them a means of reaching a larger community of people who care about the same things and are interested in the same types of products. Is it whining when someone gives a book or a product a one-star rating on its website? In fact, those who do are “critics” (under Forrester’s technographics breakout) while those who blog about it are “creators.” Companies ignore any dissatisfied customer at their peril.

Conclusion

I’ve been trying to think of other reasons that customer support outrach wouldn’t scale as it becomes more common, but I’m coming up dry. I remain as convinced as ever that this is a new model to enhance customer support efforts, one that can save money and improve reputations.

Am I missing anything?