Earlier this month, we told you about what happened to film director Kevin Smith. He got kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight, after the flight crew decided he was, quote: “Too fat to fly!” Smith posted a message about the incident on Twitter, and within 20 minutes he got a personal apology from the airline, along with a free standby flight.

That incident got some people wondering: Do you have to be a big-time celebrity to get fast customer service these days? In a word: “NO!” In fact, according to CNN, a growing number of people are discovering that it doesn’t matter if you’re Kevin Smith from Hollywood, or Joe Smith from Anytown. The fastest way to get help these days is to post your customer service complaints online! Why? Adam Ostrow is a social media expert who runs the Website Mashable.com. He says almost all big companies use social media Websites – like Facebook and Twitter, and those companies hire entire teams to monitor those sites, and catch negative comments before they go out to hundreds of thousands of people! That way, the company can deal with a problem before it becomes a public relations nightmare. Knowing that, what’s the most effective way to make sure your complaints get heard online?

• Ostrow recommends looking up the company on Facebook. Most companies have a “Fan Page,” where you can find contact information for an actual person who works for the company.
• Post your complaint to the company’s Twitter account, but keep the length of your complaint as short as possible. That way, other people can easily “retweet” – or forward – your message, and share their own thoughts about it. The more people who retweet your comment, the more likely you’ll be to get heard.
• Finally: Don’t rely on social media exclusively. Ostrow says you should continue to try the normal channels for filing a complaint – like sending an email, or calling the company’s hotline number.
  
  

Want to go further? You can find a “how to” guide for getting yourself heard on social networks at Mashable.com.