He wrote a book on social media, and then got a steak.

Frequent flier Peter Shankman, author of a book about customer service through social media, entitled “Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World,” may just be the expert on social CRM, but he probably didn’t expect such a delicious consequence to come out of a recent tweet he posted on Twitter (News - Alert).

Right before he took off from Tampa, Fla., Shankman tweeted to the official @Morton’s steakhouse Twitter account that he would love to have a porterhouse waiting for him upon landing at Newark Airport, as reported by Yahoo News. Little did he know that within the two and a half hours he spent in the air, Morton’s social media department, closely monitoring the Morton’s account at the time, saw the tweet, got approval to feed Shankman, and transported a freshly cooked porterhouse steak to the airport to greet him upon his arrival – served right from the hands of a tuxedo-dressed server.

An exemplary effort of true customer service, this exemplifies social CRM at its best. As TMC’s (News - Alert) own Brendan Read recently wrote, “Social CRM offers two advantages… first, it permits following unstructured conversations among customers or customers and companies. Second, it adds a new touch point to the existing channels.”

In this particular case, Twitter functioned as a channel to directly connect consumers to businesses in a brand new way. It also highlights the need for companies to integrate social media into their business model.

“Social CRM has brought customers back into the customer equation,” said Fergus Griffin, vice president of Service Cloud product marketing at Salesforce.com (News - Alert), as reported by TMC. “Customer interactions have become transparent. The whole world can see how companies are treating their customers. And it is forcing companies to think about their customer first and what their experiences are.”

In other words, it’s time for businesses to start listening via social media channels so they can not only deliver their products and services on a whole new level, but also gain insight into customers’ needs. In some cases, 140 characters is just not enough to satisfy a customer, and a solution to a problem may be achieved through other methods of conversations– via phone, chat or even to their stomach, in this case.

As for Shankman, who may have received such a quick reaction due to his reputation and 100,000 Twitter followers, Yahoo speculates, he accredited the quick response time for the food establishment’s quality social media department as well as for his being a consistent customer.

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Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny