Businesses should think about things from the customer's point of view, too. Carfi says it's important to remember that, as individuals, we're also customers. When you remember this, he adds, you'll bring empathy to business conversations.

Duty agrees that is an important aspect of providing customer support through social media.

"Our motto is, let's do what's right for the customer. If there's a policy that gets in the way of that, or a process that is customer unfriendly, we'll throw it out the window at that point," he said. "There's no script for us. There's a high level of research to see the history of the customer. Then it's a judgment call to determine what is the right decision for the customer-and it's often independent of what the 30-day return policy or warranty exception policy says."

in CIO's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Drilldown.