The breakdown: Retailers post signs and stickers pointing to Skweal.com. Customers with smartphones pull it up in their browsers and the site finds the location. Feedback is then privately sent via email or SMS to the store’s manager who can take immediate action.

Skweal founder, Tyler Crowley, is betting that when presented with a convenient option to keep feedback private, customers will “generally do the right thing” – as he expressed in a healthy debate in the comments of an All Things Digital blog post by Liz Gannes.

We here at Trustworthy advocate anything that connects consumers with companies in an effort towards greater mutual satisfaction. Social, email, telephone, iPhone app – what matters most is that it’s customer convenience in the driver’s seat.

What brands might miss are the benefits of amplification and scale that come with social media customer service. Like even the best call-center representative, when the manager addresses a customer’s praise or offers a helpful solution to an issue, the whole experience dies when they hang up the phone (or in this case, swipe the touchscreen closed). The customer’s friends and followers never benefit from these interactions, silencing the digital word of mouth.

Speaking of scale, I’ve argued in the past against those who worry that social media response can’t scale in large organizations with even larger customer bases increasingly voicing opinions online. Holding that line of thinking against the Skweal model, the one-to-one nature of issue resolution is strained to call-center proportions.

Also, retailers must burden the customer with finding their location on the Skweal website to voice their opinion. Like the “best camera is the one you have” argument for camera-phones, as easy as it is to visit a URL on a smartphone, it will never be as convenient as using the platform they’re already on (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp) to speak out.

Cautions aside, if Mr. Crowley can get retailers to sign on en masse, we may see Skweal lead the next wave of the digital customer service revolution!

First off, everything we’d heard about the Zappos culture, attitude and employees is true.

Our plane landed in Vegas as the tour was starting, so we arrived pretty late. Nevertheless, we were whisked inside by friendly people to catch up with the tour in-progress, just in time to say “Hi” to CEO, Tony Hsieh, working away at his storied cubicle in the middle of “Monkey Row.” Zappos Culture Guides, Jon Wolske and Andi Lyn were quick to make us feel welcome with warm greetings and small talk. Everything about Zappos is genuine. With daily, free tours, it would be easy for the delivery to feel rehearsed and stale. Instead, it felt more like a first-day-on-the-job orientation with your future co-workers.

Afterwards, Rob and I were pressed for time to get to a client meeting on the Strip, about twelve miles away. We were told a cab would take too long, and that they’d be happy to give us a free ride on the Zappos Shuttle. Minutes later a Zappos-wrapped Suburban whisked us to our meeting with time to spare.

The “secret sauce” of Zappos’s success is really no secret at all. They genuinely care about their customers, and they’ve developed a unique system of catering to and connecting with their customers that flies in the face of corporate best practices. It simply comes down to empowering employees to be human in their interactions with customers, which in turn, humanizes the company.

Just watch Andi explain how they handle customer service and you’ll get what I mean.

Oh yeah. They *made* me wear a funny hat and take this picture too.

Watch as the Director of Social Media struggles with response even after following the advice from gurus, blogs and books to a T. Lucky for him, ”Watercooler Wanda” is there to school him on the importance of letting a specialist like Trustworthy handle the response so he can focus strategy and culture internally.

Aaron leaves us with some valuable words of wisdom for companies wanting to emulate his success in community building, growing and sustaining.

Thanks, Aaron!

UPDATE: Be sure to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview!

But more importantly, what’s with the nickname, “Tank”…?

Aaron Kaufman is not one of them. He’s the Community Manager of UFC and WWE brands at THQ, a worldwide developer and publisher of video games, and he’s one of the best I’ve seen.

I first worked with Aaron at Electronic Arts when my other company, Real Pie Media, redesigned the website for the real-time strategy (RTS) genre franchise, Command and Conquer. As “APOC”, Aaron became the face of EA as far as C&C fans were concerned. He was their covert operative inside the company, fighting for their rights to annihilate the enemy more effectively in the next iteration of the game. Now, I have the pleasure of working with him again on the Smackdown VS Raw Community Site for THQ. He’s reborn as “THQ TANK” on forums, fansites, Facebook and Twitter – and crushing it with the exuberance of a WWE Superstar.

Recently, we sat down to talk social media response and community building. Aaron generously shares his secrets and wisdom from over six years in the trenches (So generously in fact, that I’ve had to break the interview into three parts). Video game fans are notoriously the most avid and critical fans a brand could hope for, and Aaron makes nurturing and earning their trust look easy.

In Part 1, we discuss how Aaron sees his role sandwiched between customer service and online marketing, if his communities have virtual boundaries, and what it means when he signs his forum posts:

“When I am not posting, I am working for YOU”

We can easily imagine this flashpoint – it comes at the moment the customer discovers the additional charge, most likely at the point of payment or later, when the bill arrives.

Reading one of these grievances, one might quickly surmise that the customer is angry about being charged more than expected. She is the victim of another greedy company out to nickel-and-dime her. But that view is short-sighted.

We haven’t identified the trust betrayal yet as defined in my previous post, Consumer Motivations. To do this, you’d have to know that more often than not, these objections come after the customer has paid a discounted rate. This changes everything. Now, we’re talking about someone who may not have the means to afford the product without the discount. This person made a purchase decision out of necessity rather than convenient frugality. As it happens, customers who pay full price rarely complain about the “hidden” fees.

The trust betrayal in this case is less about perceived value and more about the perceived trust itself. The perceived value is high; in fact many customers praise the value while taking issue with the “hidden” fee. The unbalanced trade swaps trust for value and now looks like this: High perceived trust (misplaced) outweighing low perceived trustworthiness.*

From this, we can interpret additional emotional motivations like self-esteem and even financial insecurity. Addressing the superficial anger and cheated motivations would be ill-advised, potentially prompting further argument in the public forum.

Can you think this hard on each and every complaint in any meaningful and scalable way? Yes, but it takes intuition, research and careful planning to effectively communicate and reestablish trust in social media channels.

*This is not to say our client is untrustworthy. Remember, “perceived” is the key word here. It’s up to the company to address the cause and rebuild trust if needed (that’s our job).

I reached out to Joshua, who graciously agreed to sit down with me over piña coladas and discuss my favorite topic, social media response. More Today Show than 60 Minutes (hey, I was on vacation after all), we discuss the strategy behind his new position, corporate oversight, tools, scalability, and get another perspective on how companies are building loyalty with social media response.

Yes, it’s my dream-job; strolling around the balmy, eden-like grounds, iPad in hand, helping people with social media.

Treat the cause, not the symptom.

From mental and physical wellness to sociology and legislation, it’s a truism that’s earned its mettle. So why are so many well-intentioned companies responding to their customers’ issues at face value? There are real people behind each tweet, status update and blog post. Their expressions reveal passion and complex emotions. The grievances are just the symptoms and it’s the responsibility of the responder to address the cause.

After all, there is a lot riding on the brand response. Beyond immediate satisfaction and problem solving, there are greater, long-term benefits like loyalty and social-evangelism. Being there is great. Offering a fix is even better. But can the violation of trust that motivated the complaint really be repaired? That replacement part or adjusted bill simply stops the bleeding. It cures the symptom. But rebuilding trust requires more than that. Imagine the moments between the first spark of frustration, as emotions escalate, until the customer complains in public online. That’s the part that demands mending. That’s the cause that needs to be treated.

Flashpoint. Motivation. Communication. Response. Satisfaction. Trust.

These are the six steps to focus on, but we start in the middle with the customer’s communication. From that communication, we must decipher the first two. We may never know what the flashpoint was, but as long as we identify the motivation correctly, our response will have a greater chance of building back trust. The purpose of the flashpoint step is less about identifying it and more about recognizing its significance in the chain of events. In many cases, if we address the motivation in our response, the satisfaction of a fix is secondary. Often times, there is no reasonable fix, but we can rebuild trust by treating the cause.

Of course, treating the cause also means fixing what’s wrong with your product or service, but that’s another blog post.

Praise also has motivations that should be addressed with the same considerations.

Trust Betrayal

All consumer motivations start with one commonality; the customer’s trust has been betrayed. This happens when the perceived effort is higher than the perceived value and the trade becomes unbalanced. The moment the customer arrives at this conclusion is what I call the flashpoint. It’s the moment when the widget breaks, the software crashes or the service is slow. Unless it was delivered on the doorstep for free, an unbalance occurs and triggers an emotional response AKA the motivation.

Motivated to express dissatisfaction publicly.

Now we’re at the point of communication, looking back. Communipathology, if you will. What drove the customer to tweet in ALL CAPS, punctuated by a #FAIL? It wasn’t that the widget broke or the software crashed or the service was slow. It was how that flashpoint made them feel . Understanding how it made them feel is the key to identifying their motivation for expressing their discontent in a public forum.

So, how do we ID motivations? I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear your’s in the comments below.

That’s great news for Old Spice, but ultimately this is about making your grandpa’s brand relevant to a new, modern customer. So how did Wieden + Kennedy turn their wildly popular Old Spice Guy spots into a viral sensation? Social media response, that’s how.

Let’s examine why these 87 short videos responding to celebs and common folk alike, resonated with people:

1. They leveraged a smart and popular campaign of TV spots.
2. The writing and delivery by Isaiah Mustafa was pitch-perfect awesomesauce.
3. The rapid-fire responses over an 11-hour marathon felt live and fresh.
4. Social media response connects consumers with a brand message like no other tactic available to marketers.

The great promise of social media for brands lies not in promotional Facebook pages, PR Twitter accounts and YouTube channels full of TV spots. No, the promise is fulfilled as brands connect with their customers in meaningful and human exchanges called trust transactions. A trust transaction is any encounter that results in an increase in confidence and loyalty.

In this instance it’s a fantasy spokesperson, but the truth cannot be denied; the magic of a real-time, two-way dialogue is a powerful branding and, as it turns out, sales technique.

UPDATE: W+K has released a case study of the campaign which helps to make my case (thanks guys!).