Someone must engage
- 40 Comment
GUEST POST by: PR Cog, a PR pro at a small Manhattan PR agency. He also writes at PR Cog’s Gear Grindings and serves as editor of PR Breakfast Club.
A number of weeks ago I was on the receiving end of a slight customer service fiasco. Long story short I needed a printing job done “yesterday.” Normally I take these projects to the fine folks at Vistaprint who do great work and have great customer service (no payment, thank you FTC), but the time constraint didn’t allow for that. Instead I submitted the project to the local branch of a national office supply chain that has its own in-house printing facilities. I won’t name names, but you know which company it is.
I won’t get into the customer service aspect of this ordeal, since it’s simply shocking the process can fall to pieces at so many levels with no attempts to resuscitate. But here’s the relevant kick in the pants – Being me, I kvetched immediately on Twitter. A few of you saw my comments and had some choice words for the company as well. But did I hear from the company? No.
It’s entirely possible the tweets (yes I complained a few times) went unheard, but that seems either far-fetched or absurdly short-sighted on the part of the company. Is it really possible a top retail store (perhaps the leader in its sector) has absolutely no one from advertising, marketing, PR or customer service on Twitter (or that if they do they aren’t listening or aren’t sending complaints to the proper department) to at least monitor for the brand’s name?
Here’s the point – It doesn’t matter why you’re not on Twitter (or the other social media platforms). Whether it’s because some high and mighty CMO thinks Twitter (or all of social media) is a fad or if it’s because your internal departments are still trying to decide who get the job, or some other ridiculous reason – if you’re a consumer brand this is where your customers are – now. Not in two weeks or two years.
Speaking of your customers – guest who they’re talking to? That’s right – other customers – potential and current. If you don’t get involved in the conversation or at least listen to what’s going on you will be tried in absentia. And as we’re all learning, while the large brands may make the big splash when they finally decide to grace the social media space with their presence it’s the ones who are there, now, engaging (not just broadcasting coupons) who will benefit most in the long-term.
40 Comments on this post
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Keith Trivitt said:
Cog – Excellent point regarding the fact that even if a company’s marketing/PR team or CMO/CEO isn’t on board or refuses to be on board with Twitter and other forms of social media, that doesn’t mean its customers aren’t there, and it certainly means that they are talking to similar, like-minded customers, as you pointed out.
The fact is, we can’t ignore the tide of customer comments and conversations that are going on between customers anymore. We can’t feign ignorance (how was I supposed to know they were upset about that price increase? I can’t talk to them directly!) because we CAN talk to customers directly now, and we can help fix their problems, and we can help to assuage their worries and concerns.
However, I would say that in this realm, I think it’s more of a marketing area that should take the lead in terms of direct customer support via social media. Certainly, the PR pros/agency reps can help steer strategy and effective messages that will drive change, but I think marketing has more of the day-to-day contact with customers that should be maintained and enhanced via social media.
@KeithTrivitt
December 10th, 2009 at 12:08 pm -
PR Cog said:
Hey Keith -
Good seeing you over here
. I tend to agree with you on Marketing running point when it comes CS (unless CS itself is online). In the absence of that and the expectation of teamwork I’d hope any department would route comments/complaints to the appropriate team, at the very least in hopes of convincing that department get on the ball. December 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm -
Kate Ottavio said:
I’ve been fortunate to have a couple speaking opportunities to share the best practices of social media to CT businesses and this is one point I can never stress enough: your customers are out there talking; you need to be there to listen and react. Companies fear too often the “backlash” on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Well, it’s going to happen in some way, shape or form, so why not be proactive and reach where you can? When we moved offices, I complained AT&T was tossing me around to 18 different phone numbers with no one to help me. I tweeted something along the lines of “please someone from AT&T help me. We can’t find our DSL line.” Within 30 minutes, I had a service person reply back to help me. Her response averted me ranting about their service on Twitter. It’s a great example.
Nice post, Cog!
December 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm -
PRsarahevans said:
Thanks to everyone for sharing.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:44 pm -
cash back with credit said:
Excellent point and article. Though, I would like how to go about getting a gig such as guest blog post. I have been trying to do some of these for a while and never could really get my foot in the door any suggestions?
December 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm -
Aluminum Laptop Cases said:
Good point. Companies should not be ignoring social media sites like twitter, no matter how big the company is. When you are granted such a perfect chance to communicate with your potential customers, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage?
December 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm -
Jeff Esposito said:
Cog – as usual great post. I was waiting for this post for a while, because I remember the rants very well.
I agree that in this day and age there is no excuse to not have a presence on Twitter. The conversation will happen with or without you.
Especially for a company of their size it is inexcusable to merely offer a deal or discount link.
December 10th, 2009 at 4:33 pm -
Jennifer Wilbur said:
Nice one, Cog. I tell clients, colleagues and prospects this all the time. I’ve witnessed 1st hand how talking to customers via Twitter and Facebook is a win/win for everyone. Whether is a simple question or a acknowledging a nit, or even just thanking them for a kind word, they are always appreciative. Appreciative that you took 5 seconds out of your day to listen. It’s not that hard to do, and companies will find they get insightful questions and suggestions this way. Not to mention fervent brand evangelists.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:14 pm -
PR Cog said:
Hi Folks -
Thanks all for commenting.
Kate, etc. – I don’t think I could agree more with all of you. It’s never been easier for a company to join in on the watercooler/soccer mom talk and fix problems as they happen or make a good experience an even better one. Now it’s just a matter of waking up the sleeping giants and showing them how they can use this little birdie to their advantage.
Cheers folks.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:14 pm -
Catering said:
Agree with PR Cog it wake up time for giants. Your guest Post seems very professional hopping in future for more interesting post.
December 11th, 2009 at 5:08 am -
TJ Dietderich said:
Hey Cog, I know you’re right; monitoring is important and everyone should be doing it. But I will play devil’s advocate for just one fluffy moment and say that when people are experiencing terrible customer service, the best way to get satisfaction is to deal with the problem in meatspace. I know you probably did try that and, finding yourself speaking to a corporation-sized brick wall, complained via Twitter. But speaking as someone who used to work on the other side of the fence, a lot of angry customers seem to bottle up their rage, leaving you none the wiser about their dissatisfaction, and then they go straight to your manager to yell about you without even giving you a chance to make things right, and come on, how was I to know you hated state quarters and wanted normal ones as change!? For example.
Just saying that, to be fair, we have to give them a chance to fix things in real life, where stuff happens a bit more immediately.
December 11th, 2009 at 9:42 am -
Mike Brice said:
Maybe people who are Twitter are giving it too much weight.
Maybe a major retail store doesn’t need to be on Twitter.
I think there is a degree of twitter arrogance, thinking that a company must have a presence and must have a staff to respond.
Twitter and Facebook could end up going the way of mySpace.
I agree with a previous poster. If you have a complaint, get it handled right there. Ask for a manager and deal with it directly.
Leaving and then using twitter is very passive aggressive behavior.
December 11th, 2009 at 10:17 am -
KA in philly said:
Just a thought: if a company doesn’t care enough to ensure that its customer service people are properly trained to deal with the public, why should it care about what the customers say on social media? The latter is only a reflection of the fundamental problem demonstrated by the former.
December 11th, 2009 at 10:26 am -
Michael Fraietta said:
Like my mother used to say, “Ignore Your Teeth and They’ll Go Away”.
Works the same with your customers….watch them disappear.Michael Fraietta
Filtrbox Community Manager & Chief Listener
@MichaelFraiettaDecember 11th, 2009 at 10:57 am -
PR Cog said:
Hey TJ and Mike -
I didn’t go into the full explanation of what happened at the store for space reasons.
The short version of the long story is that after speaking with the low man on the totem pole, him talking to his boss and them spending 10 minutes trying to find the order placed 5 hours earlier online (even with my name and confirmation number, printed receipt in hand) their best solution was to go home, resubmit and hope for the best (to get it done the next day). ‘Hope for the best’ is simply not acceptable.
Having received some excellent CS from other companies on Twitter previously I made my comments in the hopes that perhaps someone at corporate could solve the problem.
The point at which I turned to Twitter was when the store representatives basically told me to go solve the problem myself, instead of offering to go above beyond when the error was obviously on their end (based on the confirmation from their order system).
What else could they have done to keep me interested — some quick ideas – offering delivery (not burdensome or unheard of in NYC), discount, rush service the next morning, or even offering the direct contact info of the morning manager to ensure my order went through while ‘hoping for the best.’
I decided the best way to solve the problem was to find a company interested in my business.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am -
Meredith said:
I agree with KA in philly – Yes, companies should engage with their customers on social media platforms but they must also properly train their in-store sales/customer service people.
I worked in retail in HS/College, and stores where I was given good training in conflict resolution (regardless of business size) were more successful and generated more repeat business.
Thanks for this post, PR Cog! Great read.
December 11th, 2009 at 11:32 am -
Alexis said:
I disagree with the idea that people on Twitter are giving it too much weight — although I do think a well-rounded social media monitoring strategy would benefit companies.
Given some recent statistics (after a brief search, I found a report by Forrester that stated that 85% of US online participants visited a social network at least once a month), I think it’s clear that while not *all* people are on these networks, a great number are. A number great enough that companies should take notice, and probably get involved to some extent.
If social media goes the way of the dodo, so be it. But does that really give companies an excuse to ignore it NOW, when clearly so many people are using it?
@Lex_D
December 11th, 2009 at 11:36 am -
PRsarahevans said:
Cog,
I’m glad you shared your experience. While companies are not “expected” to respond via social media, they should at the very least be monitoring.
All,
If you look at the brand life cycle, the first step is “awareness.” Social media (and social networks in particular) are key in the awareness arena. If Cog’s comments are the “awareness” for this company, they might want to rethink how they are (or not) incorporating online communication.December 11th, 2009 at 11:41 am -
Jeanne Byington said:
I believe in social networking and customer service has been a passion of mine forever–I write a blog about it and send appropriate smoke signals by Twitter and Facebook.
However, just as I advise clients not to focus on only one form of communication to share their news, if I wanted results from poor customer service, product quality or anything else, I wouldn’t rely on a few tweets and blame the company, big or small, for not listening or responding. Waste of time.
The way I get results, from the biggest to the smallest–and it has worked 100 percent of the time in the last year when unfortunately I had four major glitches to address–is by plain old snail mail to the chairman. [Granted, before I got to this point, I'd wasted hours in chat rooms trying to get things fixed in all the ways a company wants me to, to no result....]
Everyone forgets: We are in the infancy of social networking. So many of the people who think they are hip and cool with it all aren’t–but that’s a subject of another post.
Bottom line: Do you want your gripe addressed, or like the corporations that put us through the nightmare of press one, press two, do you hope to reach your objective by communicating only in the way you feel most comfortable?
December 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm -
PR Cog said:
Hi Jeanne -
Thanks for your comment, and I do (once the season slows down a bit) plan to address the problem through more traditional means. As I’ve seen (and experienced) the companies participating in the SM space have been able to resolve problems in much shorter a time-frame than will take through traditional means. Since this was a short-term project I had the mistaken belief this company would be active.
You are right, however, SM is in its infancy and not every company will be fully engaged. Simultaneously I’m sure the day will arrive that there are so many issues to address through SM that the resolution time will be approximately the same as through traditional means.
Thanks again,
PDecember 11th, 2009 at 4:27 pm -
Teknoloji haberleri said:
Thanks to everyone for sharing.
December 11th, 2009 at 5:26 pm -
Pes 2010 Patch said:
Great Article.Thanks Sarah
December 12th, 2009 at 4:59 pm -
resimler said:
In the absence of that and the expectation of teamwork I’d hope any department would route comments/complaints to the appropriate team, at the very least in hopes of convincing that department get on the ball.Good seeing you over here
. I tend to agree with you on Marketing running point when it comes CS (unless CS itself is online).December 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am -
blue cross tonik said:
Good point. Companies should not be ignoring social media sites like twitter, no matter how big the company is.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:22 am -
facebook video said:
thanx for post
January 1st, 2010 at 7:18 am -
avril lavigne said:
Thanks to everyone for sharing.
January 1st, 2010 at 7:43 am -
malatya haber said:
thanx for post
January 1st, 2010 at 8:38 am -
youtube gir said:
thank you for entery
January 1st, 2010 at 8:49 am -
yemek tarifleri said:
someone must do it
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:22 am -
calivita said:
picture is very nice
January 14th, 2010 at 6:36 am -
calivita said:
and i wannt meet with yemek tarifleri what a interesting web site
January 14th, 2010 at 6:37 am -
calivita said:
i also want to meet malatya haber pls find me you can do it
January 14th, 2010 at 6:37 am -
Bidet said:
Its almost important to have good customer service and keep in contact with your customers, if they don’t like your service to them, they will tell other customers and you can lose potential clients. The customer comes first and you always have to make them happy.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:19 pm -
youtube gir said:
great idea, thanks for sharing.
February 16th, 2010 at 8:47 am -
kelowna mortgage said:
Very Good point. Companies should not be ignoring social media sites like twitter, no matter how big the company is.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:59 pm -
kelowna real estate said:
These companies should not be ignoring social media sites like twitter, no matter how big the company is. When you are granted such a perfect chance to communicate with your potential customers, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage?
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:03 pm
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