HP shows how listening on twitter can turn a bad situation into a good one

It still surprises me how many brands use twitter and other social channels to talk and not listen. From what I can see, many brands just use them as broadcast channels.

I came across a good example lately on Brando's blog of HP listening on twitter.

The girlfriend of one of the guys who works there had her apartment broken into. Two laptops were stolen. One of the girls who lives in the apartment tweeted, "Just two laptops (including mine) taken. Could have been worse, I suppose".

A few days later, a package was delivered for her. In it was a laptop.

It turns out that HP had been monitoring twitter and saw the tweet about the break in. They replied with the tweet above and a few days later, delivered a laptop on loan for a couple of weeks.