I was actually about to post something similar then I saw this. Sears needs to have separate twitter accounts for each major department. Someone needs help finding electronics they can twitter the Sears Electronics twitter account and receive an answer. For the department oriented accounts, Sears staff (preferably someone from a store or with store experience) to answer to customers.

Ideally, it would be staff. Though if a customer wants to chime in with an opinion I don't see that as a problem.

There are customer service phones at Sears Essentials stores next to the price check machines. Maybe this will expand to the rest of the company. Thatmanguy has an idea post about these phones.

Who uses a telephone nowadays? If I can't access the info on my smart phone then I'm not interested. I have better things to do than to try and hunt down a phone to tell them to go hunt me down an associate to help me.

Well, the phone is basically working like a button. You pick up the phone, and it automatically starts paging for help. You don't actually call anyone. And our price checking machines are all over the place, so you don't have to go farther than about 25' to reach one (it's a legal thing in MA).

Hes talking about product information, since twitter is such an up to minute updating system, a customer can post on twitter, I am looking at tv's, what are thoughts between Sony and Samsung, and the Sears employee in charge of that twitter account and reply back a quick comparison of the two products, or a customer is wondering if a movie had been released, or what the current promotion is in "said" department. There are so many online tools that Sears could capitalize on that no retail company has even dabbled in.

Or just start a chainsaw, that gets attention fast.

that or just a texting hot number for questions, that could be posted through-out the store "have a question? text us at 1234." or somethign like that

If you have a smartphone, I am just assuming youll have internet access. sears2go is a mobile service with information you can get. I dont like the idea of staff using twitter or sitting around waiting for a question. Go find someone in the store, and ask the manager if you need. I cannot see any possibility where twitter would be more efficient than using mobile web, or one of the many kiosks with sears.com access, or asking somebody. Would your question fit in 140 characters if it was that necessary to begin with? Seems like a bad idea.

If you have a large enough twitter base for the questions, answers may be almost instantaneous. Best Buy uses their salesforce to answer customer's twitter questions, check it out. www.bestbuy.com/twelpforce ... So any retailer that can connect enough experts to customers will be able to help customers pretty darn fast. Gulicious, smartphones are great, there isn't always someone at the store to talk to, so as a Twitter user, I can tell you that this Twitter idea is a great idea that has already been implemented by others and will continue to be implemented by more and more retailers as time goes on.