We’re always on the look out for instructive and intelligent social media case studies and debate, if only to cut through the deafening noise of social media blather being produced on an hourly basis.

So we were interested to download and read The Social Contract: Customers, Companies, Communities, Conversations in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship, published as an ebook by The Social Customer.com.

A slim but interesting tome, The Social Contract spares us the self-aggrandising of so-many social media PR and marketing experts and focuses on the nitty-gritty of what so-much online conversation about brands is really about – shoddy customer service.

This is an edited compendium of guest voices and the book’s strength comes from being able to drawing on the experiences of smart thinkers like Chris Brogan, Radian 6′s David Alston, Comcasts Frank Eliason and Barnes & Noble’s Kevin Ryan.

Admittedly there is nothing radically new here for anyone already working in the trenches of social media customer service but one central theme emerges from the writing time and time again: social media customer service is only as good as the structures a company has in place to rectify the parts of its operations that have been found wanting. That, by natural extension, suggests that social media’s full effect will be felt throughout the entire operations and DNA of global business as opposed to the balkanized approach of many current PR and marketing social initiatives.

As John Burton, Director Product Management at SAP Labs, succinctly titles his “chapter” Don’t Bother Wasting Money on Social Media Until Your Organization Can Competently Handle A Customer Phone Call of Email.

Those that can are best prepared to capitalize on the feedback and insight they will receive from social media customer service. As Radian6‘s David Alston writes: “With the advent of Web 2.0, blogging, tweeting, and commenting have become far easier than looking up a phone number and waiting in a queue. Thankfully, a growing number of companies have realized this and are staffing up to assist customers on the channel they choose — the two-way channel called social media.”

For Alston, the worst thing a company can do is leave its customers hanging  on the social phone.

You can download the ebook from The Social Customer site.