They may not believe the demographic data, but calling up search.twitter.com and typing some of their industry terms might help convince them. Are people talking about their company? Their competitors?

It’s funny that you mention the five steps because I have a half-completed blog post based on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying.

You just gave me the inspiration to finish it up!

Is this skepticism or is this denial? If the latter, we need to move these companies through the five stages of grieving and get them to acceptance!

Thanks for the comment.

Historically, customers have always demanded that the companies they patron use the technologies of the day. The telephone, the toll-free number and email are all historical examples of technologies that became a “checkmark” for any serious business.

These customer demands can come in two different ways, though:

1) “Active” where they ask for their vendor to use a specific channel

2) “Passive” where they vote with their dollars because the competition offers help on the channel and your company doesn’t.

I’m wondering if Twitter will become a checkmark service for business. With example-after-example of corporations answering customer and prospect questions on Twitter, at what point does conventional wisdom just “assume” that all serious companies are using it, and those who don’t have been dropped from consideration?

What’s your experience with customers reaching out to companies they do business with to ask them about social media involvement? It seems to me that one thing that would help the “my customers don’t use social networks” response is if they are actively asking their partners about its use. Is it a little of the chicken or egg dilemma here?