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Two recent studies about how companies use social media for customer support have concluded that for the most part they don't do a very effective job at responding to complaints. And while some companies are better at listening and responding to their customers, many do a miserable job, still. It is a sad and somewhat depressing state of affairs, to be sure.

On Tuesday, July 19, I attended Dell's second annual Customer Advisory Panel (CAP) meeting, split this year between the Westin Hotel at the Domain (a swanky, high-end, high-density shopping, dining, and condominium mecca in North Austin) and Dell Headquarters in Round Rock, TX. Though the name of this even doesn't mention social media, the entire focus of the meeting was to explore, explain and discuss how Dell can provide better sales and technical support, education, and information to its customers using social media.

Earlier this week Avaya announced new contact center products that integrate with social media. Avaya, one of the descendants from Ma Bell, supplies telephony hardware and software to some of the largest enterprises and telecommunications companies in the world, and they are getting seriously Facebook'd.

It isn't all that surprising, really. Avaya isn't some old fuddy-duddy phone company. It has been a huge user of social media for its own purposes for quite some time.

Two new apps are helping improve the online customer experience by tying in advanced communications technologies in interesting ways. The apps, MyCyberTwin and Radish System's ChoiceView, offer to remove some of the misery and tedium involved in getting help and have wide potential applications in customer support, problem resolution, and other situations. Deplolyed properly, they could increase conversion rates and improve the delivery of online customer service. Let's take a closer look at both.

According to the results of a new survey by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Google's users are extremely happy with their search engine. Google scored 86 points out of a possible 100, followed by Yahoo with 77 points. It is important to note, however, that this survey was conducted before Microsoft's Bing arrived on the market, so the current numbers would probably look different. In this survey, Microsoft's Live Search received 75 points. However, while the numbers might be a bit old, they clearly show the problems Bing faces in a marketplace where most consumers are perfectly happy with Google.