The Scalability of Twitter Customer Service

I was reading a blog post the other day and then reading some research as well that talked about the use of Twitter as a customer service channel. The research article threw out some numbers and percentages of how many people are going to Twitter or other social sites to use them as a means to get their questions answered. It is still a relatively low percentage as compared to more traditional channels. But that got me thinking about Twitter in particular and to some degree Facebook as well and the scalability of servicing customers in those channels.

It is not really a big "problem" for most companies today as their volumes in those channels are just a fraction of the volumes of lets say a phone channel or even a live chat channel. But what is going to happen when people continue to share stories about how fast and easy it was to get service done right on Twitter as compared to the 5 min wait for a live agent, a transfer or two to the right agent and then 3-5 min with that agent to figure out the problem?

Just like the channels before it, more and more bodies will likely be the only answer to this eventual problem.

What do you think about this potential problem?