Media140: Why wifi failure is a positive for Twitter

If ever there is a place where an internet provider doesn't want their broadband service to stop working it is in a conference room full of 200 people gathered to talk about social media. Well, that very scenario came true today when the wifi connection at the Media140 event in central London failed.

I was there and like the majority of the audience sat down, switched on my laptop and got ready to tweet and live blog the proceedings. But also like everyone else, I breathed a heavy sigh as the wifi refused to connect. Within seconds of conference organiser Ande Gregson informing us that it was a BT problem, the inevitable '#BT #FAIL' tweets began appearing in the Twitter stream for all to see as frustrated delegates resorted to having to use their iPhone or Blackberry to tell the world what was going on in London. Internet connection was eventually restored at 5pm; just as the conference ended.

Not great for BT eh? Well no but it's not all negative as the incident demonstrates how Twitter can be used to respond to customer issues and complaints.

The telecoms company is one of an increasing number of businesses which have set up a dedicated customer service channel on the social network. Named @BTCare, BT's feed is used by employees to respond to niggles, questions, complaints and problems.

During the Media140 incident, several delegates - including me - tweeted at BT Care asking for the problem to be fixed. Now I know it took the company several hours to resolve the issue but throughout, tweets keeping us updated on the situation were sent and ultimately the conference proceeded smoothly with the fact that the tweeters present had to use phones rather than laptops not proving to be a real hardship.

Twitter and other real-time social media networks give businesses a real opportunity to better engage with their customers in an open and public way. Not so long ago it would have been difficult for a large group of people to all target a complaint to a single company with a potential audience of millions looking on. With Twitter, that's possible.

Whatever you say about how long it took BT to sort out today's issue, the fact that the Twitter played a part in it is a positive. Search the Twittersphere and you'll find regular examples of frustrated users ranting about BT only for them to be thanking the company after a BT Care agent has spotted the tweet and resolved the problem.

So while the twaddicts among us may have felt a little hard done by when we couldn't connect, let's actually view it as a victory for Twitter as a tool for doing better business.