In the same way that mystery shoppers seek out and rate the authentic in-store customer service experience, Software Advice has conducted its own social ‘mystery shopper’ experiment in a bid to find out how big brands really stack up when it comes to customer service across social channels.

Four employees sent tweets from their personal accounts to 14 leading brands over the course of 26 days. Each brand was tweeted to once each weekday for four consecutive weeks, within the following categories: urgent help required; positive; negative; a question from the company’s FAQ page; and technical, requiring more than one interaction.

And how did the brands do? Brand including the likes of Starbucks, Coca Cola, Visa and Walmart? Not very well. Not very well at all. See for yourself: