Putting yourself out on Social Media as the front man is all well and good. In fact, some people love the attention and want all those lovely follows, positive comments and fans to be in ore, but what happens when a customer complains?
Typically, companies have a complaints procedure and sole traders tend to handle things personally, directly and quickly before things escalate. Social Media puts you in personal contact with others. This blog is kind of like the TV show When good pets turn bad. It’s an interesting scenario to see people pumping things up online then failing to handle a basic complaint and worse still a sensible acknolwedgement and recognition by refund. Most people that run a service understand that 80% service level is good, achieving 90% or 95% or even 99.9% is exceptional, but what happens when you fail to deal with the complaint?
Well, this week I saw this happen in glorious fashion. Yet another customer who purchased, was dissatisfied, made a complaint through the normal channel and then found themselves making a bit of a scene by tweeting the kind of “Oi you, are you going to answer my email or what?” type tweet. Leaving customers in the lurch, going on to the next big thing, telling them you’re doing more important things and broadcasting how big your inside leg measurement is on a social network where your customer found you, is probably not the best approach.
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One of the points that I have found continually re-iterated is the opportunity that lies in social media to listen for complaints and then excel at dealing with them publicly so that people can see just how wonderful you really are. You would expect this best practice to be taken on board by people who use the tools, advocate the methods and sing the social media songs.
In terms of your own sanity, I think this kind of approach generally speaking might be the reason why some people are always fighting their way out of paper bags. For me personally, I really fail to understand why people want the limelight, but for those that do simply blocking a customer on Twitter and removing them from your friends list on Facebook probably means we should be recommending you book yourself on a customer service course.
There is no amount of potential relationship you can flog someone once you’ve been personally treated like a twit. Worst still, if you’re responsible for a brand it might be time to think about how this kind of action can spill out amongst other people who have strong opinions about how to handle such occurrences.
Only yesterday I made an online purchase, it didn’t work, I bought an alternative, I wrote to them by email, the challenged me, I explained, they credited me. Thank You. Was that good service? Yes. It was exceptional and I feel like I’m being looked after, which is important to me.
What’s important to you?
How have you taken issue with rogues?
How on earth do you deal with people when their company does not handle complaints?
Helloooo...!!
@tweetsbyskeet is on Twitter, micro-blogging, writing musings and enjoying the difference between Web1.0 and Web2.0. There is nothing this skeeter doesn't enjoy more than looking round the web and creating musing and thought provoking blogs for people who are now taking part in the interwebs. Despite the rambles, our skeeter has an honours degree in business information systems, has worked in systems design, coming from a Business Analyst discipline and now churns out plug and go artwork products for companies of all sizes.
There is nothing a skeeter likes more than people commenting on his blog.
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