Bangalore: Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to business too. From local stores to big brands, people are finding good business through Twitter.

Connecting with the customer is the main reason for the companies to use twitter for business. Once the company is connected with the customers, it is for sure getting feedback on how the company can improve their products or services and listening to them will help the company to grow huge in the future.

Here are such 3 companies which have built their twitter strategies.

1. Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines started its Twitter account @SouthwestAir, in 2007. It first started as an advertising division of the company, but later it was handled by public relation department, which is addressed by social media specialist Christi McNeill.

Around 10 people work with Southwest’s Twitter account to interact with the costumer’s queries. The queries would be about delayed flight, lost luggages and many other grievances. The airlines communication department teamed up with its customer relation team to hire and train their employees to provide a good and satisfied answer for the questions on Twitter. A team person monitors the account from 5 AM to 11 PM, which is the Southwest’s flight schedule.

If someone tweets a complaint regarding a lost luggage to @SouthwestAir than the replay may be as “So sorry to hear about your lost luggage. Have you filed a claim? Any progress yet?” It was recently twitted to an upset customer

Southwest Airlines found themselves suddenly thrown into the midst of a strengthening social media crisis, when one of their passengers who happened to be famous with over 1 million Twitter followers was thrown off the plane due to his weight. The passenger was Kevin Smith, who was angry and embarrassed, took to his Twitter account and immediately began relaying the unsightly incident back to his 1 million followers.

As soon as they saw the first Tweet from Smith, Southwest Airline contacted him personally to apologize for his experience and to address his concerns on both Twitter and with a personal phone call.

After the company's social-media crisis, McNeill says, "We shifted our tone to be a little bit more corporate."