Cover Story: Weird Science

"With all of these touchpoints sitting out there, we have to be very careful that we're not trying to dominate the conversation," says Spangler. "We're just engaged in the conversation; we're allowing our customers to interact with us in a different way. Years ago it used to be a letter and a phone call, then it was an email, and now people have a live person and everything else. We sometimes find out about an issue with a product on Twitter before somebody ever picks up the phone and calls us."