Charged for text messages thathad nothing to do with her, Kim had to spend weeks getting the billing sorted out with DTAC, her service provider.

"Talking to the staff at the call centre is like talking to a computer - they can only give programmed answers," she complains, asking to be identified only as Kim.

Those weeks were wasted. She got nowhere and almost cancelled the service.

Then one day she told the world about her problem in the MBK forum at popular community website Pantip.com. Her troubles were resolved almost immediately - by a DTAC executive no less.

The virtual world is often derided for its superficiality, but marketing people find it's a great place to learn the truth, and a great way to keep in touch with consumers.

Rather than wait for their customer-service staff reports, executives at budget airline Nok Air and mobile-phone firm DTAC use Pantip.com to talk with their customers directly and solve their problems.

True, another cell-phone outlet, recently assigned its customer-relations managers to keep an eye on the MBK forum, which is where the discussion about gadgets takes place.

Thanks to Pantip's requirement that visitors log in so they can be traced if necessary, the corporate executives know the problems and suggestions posted there are real, and that they're likely shared by thousands of other customers.

"You can find out about problems your own customers are having and those of your rivals," says Thana Thienachariya, DTAC's chief commercial officer, who solved Kim's worry. He regularly checks Pantip and Mthai.com to see if his firm's strengths or weaknesses are being discussed.

Nok Air executive vice president for marketing Sehapan Chumsai has been using the cyber forums for two years as a way of communicating with customers.

Until recently, he regularly answered questions and sorted out issues while logged in under his own first name, using a yellow beak as his avatar - the Nok Air logo.

It's not that Sehapan's customer-service staff isn't doing it's job, he says, but with his authority and their cooperation, problems can be solved quickly and efficiently.

"It makes it special for a customer when they're taken care of by someone in authority," says Sehapan, who was given the affectionate nickname "Poo [Grandpa] Se" in Pantip's Blueplanet travel forum.

He likes being a "friend" to other visitors at the websites.

"It lets me hear real compliments and complaints from the customers who are my friends in the cyber world. And they can be sure that their friend - who happens to be an executive of the airline - will take good care of them."

The execs know their customer-care staff has neither the experience nor authority to address all the issues.

"The people at Pantip are smart - they won't accept template answers or excuses," says Thana.

He recently logged in to MBK as "Thanahappy", acknowledging he was a DTAC bigwig. He'd already been the liaison between customers there and various DTAC departments for years, alerting company staff to any serious cases he found posted.

Sehapan put himself directly in the line of fire. He chose to make every case public. Thana doesn't want to be bombarded with grief, so he contacts customers privately, then later announces on the forum how the matter has been handled.

At first, both executives were accused of using the websites as marketing tools.

Kim, however, is happy with the strategy. She said online that she was looking for a new service provider, and immediately Thana approached her. Then DTAC CEO Sigve Brekke phoned to discuss her trouble. "I felt like a VIP," she says.

Kim now does indeed regard Thana a friend in cyberspace, though she admits that if there's more problems with DTAC in the future, her loyalty could abruptly end.

"But at least I found a friend, even though I don't call him about every problem."

Chalit Limpanavech, dean of communications art at Assumption University, sees this "chatroom approach" as one of the most effective and fastest ways to please a customer.

It should have been happening a long time ago, he says, noting that one of the biggest problems companies have in keeping customers satisfied is that it takes their public-relations staff a long time to come up with solutions.

The couple that runs the neighbourhood grocery store deals with only a few hundred customers, Chalit observes. Any executive of a large company who can tackle thousands of complaints online "must be a cyber geek".

Nok Air was at the centre of a recent controversy in Blueplanet when one of its customer's complaints split the forum in two - those chastising Sehapan and those defending him. Sehapan decided to quit the forum rather than be a focal point for conflict.

Or, at least, "Sehapan" quit. He's still logging in - under a different name, of course - and monitoring the chatter. He's adopted Thana's strategy and, like Thana, he's still solving problems.

Sirinya Wattanasukchai

The Nation