With shoppers today trusting the opinions of family, friends and online reviewers more than those of store sales associates, the department-store chain?s gentle words on Twitter go beyond merely enhancing the customer experience to foster great service that triggers the same reaction as love. The campaign, which includes directing customers to a separate email address for further help, reflects how retailers, burned by social media in the past, are more aggressively managing the interaction with valued customers on mobile during the year?s biggest shopping time. 

?Macy's provides a great example of what all brands ? large and small ? should be doing: responding to customer issues via social media,? said Pat Sloan, CEO of Sloan Hunt Communications, New York. ?Given the prominence of social media in every day life, brands embracing the opportunity to communicate with customers via social media seems like a no-brainer. However, there are still many brands that are not actively doing this. 

?Macy's has tackled one of the largest reasons why brands are not actively talking to their social customers ? resources,? she said. ?Leveraging the email address shows that Macy's has set up this infrastructure.? 

Macy?s, regarded as a leader among mobile marketers, uses very customer-focused language on its Twitter account. Emotional phrases that suggest concern appear in every reply to every complaint, such as: ?Oh, no! We?re sorry to hear that!? or ?We?re upset to hear you had trouble picking up your order?? or ?Oh no! This is not what we like to hear. We?ll follow up with our Woodfield Mall team.? 

For example: 

Cynthia: None of the stores around me carry the size jacket I?m looking for. I bought the wrong size in store. HELP. 

Macy?s : Oh no! We?re sorry to hear about your jacket. Please email us at social , so we can try to help. Thanks! 

Cynthia: Okay, thank you! I definitely will! 

And still another example: 

Sharlon: UGH! Double pending charge on CC from maces for my new sectional (which was damaged and has to be remade!) That?s a lot of my $ to hold. 

Macy?s: Sorry to hear about your account. Could you reach out to our team at social so we can try to help? Thanks! 

Sharlon: Thx! I will send later today. 

The email address serves Macy?s by defusing a customer's social chatter and moves the conversation away from the public ? showing that Macy's not only cares enough to respond, but keeps the public from seeing how bad the customer service issue may be, Ms. Sloan said. 

Macy?s declined comment, citing the onset of the holiday-shopping crunch. 

?We just have too many requests already in the pipeline at the moment with the events this week,? said Holly Thomas, group vice president, media relations and cause marketing for Macy?s, New York. 

Experts seem to feel that the chain, known for its Macy?s Thanksgiving Day Parade and its Christmas window displays at its Manhattan flagship store on 34th Street, is taking the right approach to holiday customer service. 

?Macy's individual focus on each consumer's complaints and issues is great,? said Szu Ann Chen Smith, partner and executive producer at Hello Design, a digital agency in Culver City, CA. 

?It's really important to acknowledge what a customer is experiencing and then offer them the information they need to address and resolve the issue. 

?Addressing and resolving issues on an individual basis not only helps solve that specific case, but also provides information that can help other customers who might be experiencing the same issue,? she said.

Macy?s is modeling the idea that good customer service, no matter which platform or avenue a customer uses to communicate with a brand, should always showcase key components, such as being helpful, courteous and timely. 

?Responses should never blame the customer, for example you probably didn?t read the fine print? or ?maybe you didn?t log in correctly,? said Vanessa Horwell, chief visibility officer at ThinkInk in Miami. ?Within the mobile environment, responses should be timely ? and that means in real-time or almost immediately.

?Customers who email or call a toll-free number don?t want to wait for hours for a response, and neither do mobile customers,? she said. ?They want an immediate response or acknowledgement that their issue is being addressed, delivered to their smartphone. 

?As a result, companies, brands and retailers with high amounts of mobile traffic should have customer service teams responding in real-time. Even though the customer is reaching out very broadly, the customer service team should transform the communication into something personal for that consumer.? 

Given that the holidays are already busy and challenging for many consumers, getting mobile holiday customer service right can be the difference between hooking a year-round shopper or causing one to bail out of frustration. 

?Consumers will gravitate to retailers and brands that acknowledge them personally and make them feel important, and mobile customer service can be one of the building blocks of that relationship,? Ms. Horwell said. ?The same companies that get customer service right also tend to support good mobile customer service.?  

Nordstrom?s, for example, has a Twitter handle for the overall brand and for the Nordstrom?s Seattle store, she said. And many companies such as Lands? End make their Twitter feeds as friendly as their catalogs.

?Smart retailers know that good customer service is good customer service, regardless of the platform or avenue in which it?s conducted,? Ms. Horwell said. 

J.Crew?s Twitter handle, @jcrew_help, is dedicated to customer service, with representatives using their names tweeting to provide personal responses. Customers regularly respond about how happy they are with the help they received. 

In an Integer Group-conducted test of 1,620 consumers, 53 percent said receiving great service triggered the same cerebral reactions as feeling loved. Moreover, shoppers rated the opinions of family, friends and online reviewers as twice as trustworthy as sales associates?. 

Those results mean that marketers must help shoppers feel the love while catering to their growing tendency to base brand preferences and purchase decisions on how they see companies handling customer problems and requests on social networks. 

?As brands seek to use Twitter as a platform for customer service, they must keep in mind that the No. 1 concern their customers will have is whether they can use these Twitter interactions in order to resolve their issues,? said Aliza Freud, founder & CEO of SheSpeaks, New York. ?With that in hand, brands also must decide what their tone is in social media. This should be a natural extension of their brand's tone as a whole.

?There is overall an increase in brands utilizing Twitter to engage with their audience and resolve customer questions,? she said. ?The holidays are a time during which there will be more of this.?