The Smith vs. Southwest Air episode is a great example that demonstrated, 1) the social media communications channel of a company can’t just be open Monday to Friday, 9-5. It must be ready to respond at anytime to customer feedback – because that customers communication channels are open 24/7. And, 2) It’s still challenging to measure an exact R.O.I. dollar figure, but in Southwest Air’s case – it was potentially in the millions related to the Kevin Smith story.

Another reason this case impacted me so much was it unfolded before my eyes – all in real-time.

To recap. It’s late Saturday evening last February and I’m casually working on the computer with one eye on my twitter stream – I see an interesting tweet from cult film director and writer Kevin Smith just before midnight. Now, Kevin has joked himself many times at his own expense about his weight problem. Seems Mr. Smith, who had boarded a Southwest Air flight was asked to leave the plane after it was deemed he was too overweight and their wasn’t an additional seat for him to buy (airlines have a little known policy of requiring severely overweight people to purchase two tickets.)

Smith was obviously very frustrated by the experience and his handling by Southwest Air attendents so he preceded to start tweeting his frustrations (and also some rather strong names for Southwest Air) – to his almost two million followers.

I clearly remember that particular Saturday night, just before midnight when I saw those first tweets from Kevin appear in my stream. You just knew that Southwest Air was looking at a big potential PR problem. When Smith also tweeted out the perfect photo of him on the plane – it didn’t take a genius to figure it was only a matter time before almost every entertainment blog and mainstream media would be picking up on this story.

But this story provided an unexpected twist. And it’s what led me to fundamentally appreciate the important role social media now plays in crisis communication.

The twist was that Southwest Air’s tweeter, after three or four of Kevin Smith’s ranting, hateful tweets bashing Southwest Air, got on the stream and began to engage Kevin Smith. More importantly, Southwest Air, through those first tweets that night – began to add their side to the conversation which by early Sunday morning was on fire online.

Because the Southwest Air person handling the twitter account got out of her bed and back online to handle the storm Kevin Smith started – Southwest Air was made aware of the looming publicity problem and could move their communications team into action.

By early Sunday morning, Southwest Air already had updated their company blog about the issues Kevin Smith raised and even offered a personal apology to Mr. Smith. By Monday morning, when now the story had spread to the mainstream news stations and Smith was interviewed on everything from CNN to NBC – Southwest Air had their representatives ready and prepared with their talking points.

And it worked. In polls later during the week a majority of people ended up siding with Southwest Air and their handling of Smith.

I believe Southwest Air was able to so effectively counter the shit storm of criticism generated by Kevin Smith because their social media person, their “twitter girl” was listening that Saturday night. If Southwest Air had just woken up Monday morning to begin dealing with the crisis – Smith’s side would have been able to dominate the media much more.

Companies still have major challenges in dealing with customers like Kevin Smith – someone who has influence and a large community of people listening – but you’d might not recognize him so he just blends in with the other customers.

The difference is, when a customer like Smith gets pissed off at the service and takes to social media to vent his frustrations – many, many people are listening.

The question then becomes does your company have the social media (and overall communications strategy) to effectively deal with this type of crisis?