This information is 100% stolen from trendwatching.com

Here are some conversations that have been collected from twitter where big brands are monitoring the conversation and responding in real time to customer service issues.

Five years ago if your company had world class customer service that meant you had some good information on your website and customers could call your toll free number 24/7

Today? you can no longer afford to wait for customers to bring their complaints to you.  If you are waiting to solve problems you are losing customers. You must be proactive about listening to the conversations and responding in real time. Twitter is an amazing tool for this. Here are some awesome examples from big brands.

Let me just qualify that and say I am throwing in the big brands thing to show that this behavior is now mainstream not that you need a big budget.  We have clients doing this way better than the big boys with micro brands and micro budgets.  check out zarbees on twitter.

Chances are your company or cause is much smaller than these. Can you really afford not to be part of the conversation?

Recently Nielsen reported that about 60% of Twitter users do not return to the site after the first month. They said that with only a 40% retention rate, the site could not sustain itself. The funny this is despite the alleged low retention rate, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about Twitter.

While people were surprised and freaking out about Twitter’s low numbers, it seemed totally normal to me. I’d take 40% any day. I was sure that other social networks had similar retention rates. Turned out I was wrong. At this point, Facebook’s and Myspace’s retention rates were about double that of Twitter’s.

Then Brendan O’Connell brought up a good point:

@andybeal I don’t think Nielsen considered Twitter apps access http://bit.ly/TdT7r

I was sure this was going to clear up the whole mess. It made sense to me; my Twitter time is spent on Twhirl. I rarely log into Twitter anymore. It turns out that Nielsen hadn’t considered Twitter applications. Yes! Victory was mine!

However, my victory was short lived when Nielsen reported that with the outside Twitter applications, the retention rate was still about 40%.

So it turns out that all of my well-wishing for Twitter’s retention was in vain. However, I really don’t think they’re in trouble. Those who continue to use Twitter after the first month are those who are hopelessly addicted. They don’t know why they are there or why they feel the need to update people on everything they’re doing, but it must be done. I have a feeling those fans aren’t going to peace-out any time soon.

I mentioned that Twitter had about half the retention rate of Facebook and Myspace. Here’s the thing, Facebook and Myspace are the most successful social networks ever. It’s actually amazing that Twitter is able to have the amount of repeat users as it does. So I don’t think we should be sending our condolences to Twitter for their small numbers; we should be congratulating them for their success.

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• Proof That Nielsen is Wrong; Twitter’s Retention Rate is Not 40% (marketingpilgrim.com)