Earlier this week, AT&T faced an ugly mob mobilizing online. Its inability to handle a massive wave of iPhone 4 pre-orders made it the second most villainous company (no brand is going to replace BP as Public Enemy Number 1) on the Net. Admirably, AT&T went into fire-fighting mode on Twitter, answering individual gripes round-the-clock. Surprisingly though it chose to leave its other social media channels out of the fracas, opting to fight the battle without some of its most effective weapons. AT&T’s approach reveals a lot about how companies view social media – that is that each social media channel has its own purpose, its own team and its own protocol for customer response. It’s a strategy that’s bound to backfire.

When you arrive on the AT&T Facebook page (population: 611,000) you’re greeted with the comforting message, “Being a fan of AT&T has its benefits!” Those benefits are hard to identify at the moment as the Facebook wall has been completely overtaken this week by fans airing their iPhone pre-order complaints, questions and rants. At one point, on Wednesday evening, AT&T did issue a lone update on its wall that seemed more self-congratulatory than illuminating. In it it said what we’d already suspected: that AT&T, faced with unprecedented demand, was forced to shut down the online pre-ordering system.

Given the unprecedented demand for iPhone 4, as of today we are …suspending pre-ordering to fulfill the orders that we’ve already received. We will keep you all posted on when pre-orders will resume. Keep in mind, as long as you received a confirmation number at the end of your order, you’re all set.

No link. No thanks-for-your-patience remark and certainly no make-good for the inconvenience. Meanwhile, the AT&T Customer Care YouTube channel (146 subscribers) is even less helpful. The last video it posted was a two-minute meet-the-team snoozer in April. You’d have to be pretty desperate to leave a help message there.

Contrast those channels with AT&T’s customer care Twitter feed, which manically responds to individual complaints during the day. (Actually, AT&T has a team of individual tweeters who field all types of direct queries from customers). The tweets are courteous, responsive and helpful. Something about the words, “Can I help? I’m following” seems to have a calming effect on even the most irate. Still, the team cannot get to everyone, and so it appears to be responding to principally to the easy ones like this:

AT&T’s scatter-shot approach to the iPhone 4 #fail, sadly, is the same philosophy adopted throughout much of the corporate world. It can be summed up in one flawed belief: that there are two distinct types of social media channels, the “angry” and the “cheery.” On the former, you can find your everyday trolls, your grouses and your squeaky wheels. (Hint: it rhymes with “bitter.”) And on the latter, you have your sycophants, your fans and your brand boosters. (Right, Facebook.) The logic then is that somehow acknowledging bad news, even the ubiquitous in-your-face stuff, on the happy marketing channel will be upsetting to the community, and so it’s best then to stick with the cheery posts there as if all’s right with the world. If the bad news is to even be addressed on the brand’s public discussion forum (and yes, there are plenty of companies who decide even that’s too tricky; see McDonald’s Facebook page during the Shrek glasses recall controversy) then it’s dumped onto the brand’s “bad news” channel, or Twitter, where customer service can handle it. The all-too-familiar practice of hiving off within an organization these channels to specific teams has created this ghetto effect.

It’s a completely counter-intuitive approach, of course. The public is just as likely to go to Facebook as it is to Twitter to get details on a product launch or, in this case, a launch meltdown. And, of course, if there’s such a thing as an AT&T-branded YouTube Customer Care channel then you’d think that that too would be a place to find answers. Hardly.

It’s not all bad news. There are a few lonely examples of companies using multiple social media channels to address customers’ problems.

Take Microsoft’s customer service Facebook page as an example. It actively responds to customers problems, plus offers tips on how to get the most out of Microsoft software. But even here there are breakdowns. The customer service Facebook page rarely directly addresses the problems posted on the wall, but rather recommends the poster go to the Microsoft customer service website or, you guessed it, that they tweet the problem to the Micorsoft customer service Twitter account as this example shows:

Gee, thanks.

Vodafone UK is a bit more proactive, using all three of its social media channels to actually help customers. Its Facebook page seems to be the most active and specific, with customer service representatives responding with helpful tips and even answers, as the Vodafone UK Facebook shows:

Vodafone evidently feels customer service is inherent in its central brand message. Its social media customer service activity occurs directly on the the branded Vodafone Facebook and Twitter channels. Its YouTube channel, called VodafoneUKHelpCenter, is the only one of the three channels that carry the “customer service” handle. But even this is slightly disingenuous as the YouTube videos are dedicated to new handset models, and the questions and comments, few as they are, are mainly about specs and features.