Having a problem with your health insurance company and can't get results?
Try tweeting.
Wellpoint, one of the nation's largest insurance companies with 3.3 million of its 34 million members enrolled in Ohio's Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, is quickly responding to complaints posted by users of Twitter, the Internet's fast-growing micro-blogging platform.
Twitter's millions of users post short -- very short, 140-character -- messages as often as they want. Most of them are 18 to 34 years old and they follow each other's tweets as well as posts from businesses, sports stars, politicians and others who broadcast everything from where to find a decent cr me brulee in San Francisco to updates on Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown's whereabouts in Cleveland.
But a growing number of companies aren't merely tweeting updates. Home Depot, Comcast, JetBlue, and now Wellpoint are just a few companies monitoring Twitter with the hopes of promoting better customer service and stopping any bad "word of mouth" advertising.
"It's readily apparent to all of us that the old way of doing business is no longer good enough," said David Finkel, the man in charge of Wellpoint's new online strategy. "We have to be able to respond and interact with our members in any manner they want and choose to react to us."
This could come in handy for the average consumer: Consider the experience of Kelley Padrick, owner of Marque, a multidisciplinary art gallery in Laguna Beach, Calif.
When Padrick -- who goes by @marquearts on Twitter -- angrily posted to her 1,800 followers on Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield wanted to raise the premium on her children's insurance to $400 a month, she heard from Wellpoint's Finkel within 10 minutes.
"I'd like 2 understnd what we did wrong. Customerservice@anthem.com," read the tweet.
She fired back: @AnthemHealth You would really like to understand what you did wrong? Apologies in advance my Twitter followers, multiple tweets coming."
Then @marquearts dished in quick tweets about Blue Cross' confusing billing, unhelpful representatives and time-consuming process. She explained how she found cheaper coverage with Blue Cross through another site.
"More than anything I was furious and frustrated and tweeting," Padrick said. And after months of making phone calls and not getting answers, Padrick's tweets suddenly put her on a first-name basis with a customer service representative.
"I felt like I was listened to, I felt like she cared about it. And more than that I got the sense that she cared about fixing it," Padrick said after the ordeal.
The exchange highlights the power consumers can have as businesses shift the way they market themselves, said Shel Israel, a senior fellow at the Society for New Communications Research and author of the upcoming book "Twitterville."
"We are going from an era of business broadcasting into business conversations," Israel said. "What has proven to be more effective is just talking to people directly. Advertising as we know it is going to die a long slow death."
And Twitter is quickly gaining momentum. The number of unique visitors to Twitter grew year-over-year from 1.2 million unique visitors in May 2008 to 18.2 million in May 2009, according to market research firm Nielsen Online.
Even more, the average time individuals spent on Twitter a day increased year-over-year from 6 minutes and 19 seconds in May 2008 to 17 minutes and 21 seconds in May 2009, Nielsen reports.
Twitter acknowledged its importance to businesses this month, saying it would offer paid accounts to companies that use its platform for marketing, customer relations and publicity.
The recent trend of companies trying to reach out to fix complaints or problems is "kind of a best practice of how social networking should be done," said Chad Mitchell, senior analyst for e-business and channel strategy at Forrester Research.
"I would look at that as 'That is pretty amazing that they are responding to me individually and they are finally listening to me,' " Mitchell said.
"The beauty of social media is that it takes that experience and allows that person to vent, and more importantly, it allows that customer to share. It creates true transparency in a marketplace where people can't cover up bad experiences."
A simple search at www.search.twitter.com for "Blue Cross" can bring up hundreds of complaints, rants and even jokes about the company. And the same search can be done for any company or individual.
"When you do that tweet -- and the same would apply to any social networking situation -- you're opening the door to a response from anybody who chooses to respond to it," said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
Of course, there is a way to keep Twitter posts seen only by your followers and not by people who do searches. Users can go to the program's settings and click the box tagged "Protect my tweets."
In the end, many people who tweet complaints hope that the company will see it, Stephens said.
"The fact of the matter is," Stephens said, "the Internet does provide an opportunity for consumers to seek redress when they feel their rights have been abused."