Customer service that isn’t really has become part of the modern landscape for most people. Surprisingly, relief is on the way in the form of social media, which according to Tom Voirol, is reviving the human art of helping people.

Once upon a time, all interaction between people and organisations was direct, personal and human. In the 20th century, populations grew, and with them businesses and governments became large and customer service unwieldy or un-economical.

As a result, companies had to scale up their customer engagement and servicing. The solution was automation. Responses were codified into scripts, customer service staff were corralled into a call centre, and callers were herded through machine-driven menus to find their own way and, preferably, answer their questions themselves.

If we, the people, wanted to partake in the fruits of economic growth, the price we had to pay was to be treated like a number. Since, at some point, virtually all companies and government institutions were doing it, we learned to live with it to the point that we expected companies to speak to us in this (sometimes literally) robotic voice and make it deliberately difficult to interact with a human being.

When, over the last decade or so, social media became such a force that organisations could no longer ignore it, they found a very alien - and strangely retro - environment. People were no longer content with being a number in a queue. Social netizens expect, nay demand, that businesses and government agencies treat them as humans.

One of the first casualties of this shift was BigPond, who opened up a Twitter account to big fanfare, and then proceeded to send any customer approaching them to the Telstra website to fill out a form. The telco copped a lot of flak for this complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of social media and, to its credit, turned it around completely over the following months. Today, the @telstra account is, together with @westpac and @qantasairways (notwithstanding the #qantasluxury debacle), one of the best examples of direct human engagement in social media.

People no longer accept the language companies use in media releases, brochures and call centre scripts when using social media channels. They demand to encounter a real human voice and that the company share the concerns of the community.

For businesses and governments this means that they will find it very hard to outsource social media responders like they did contact centres. Not being able to follow scripts, it also means that the community managers they hire or designate have to love to be helpful and truly understand and be passionate about the business.

We are still early enough in the social media revolution for organisations to be rewarded for recognising this and acting now. In a few years, it will become a survival trait.

Tom Voirol is an online strategist and head of user engagement at global digital consultancy, Reading Room. He works at the intersection of user experience, social media and mobile and helps clients in government and corporations improve their customer engagement. He also holds an MBA from MGSM and lectures social media strategy at the Australian Direct Marketing Association.