Communication between business and customer has changed rapidly since the inception of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking platforms. No longer will hiding behind exhibition stands at tradeshows and job fairs do the trick – if you’re a member of one of these sites, you can expect Joe Public to let you know just how he feels about you, which might be good or it might be bad. The important thing is to be prepared.
Let me explain. Last week, I was gearing up to see one of my favourite bands play at one of my least favourite venues in the city. My excitement, although dampened somewhat by the unfortunate location where this band (or more likely the band’s label) had chosen to play, spilled onto Twitter:
My reasons for disliking company X (company name removed out of pure fear) are pretty much summed up by the above tweet, so I won’t go into it. Let me just say that hiking drinks prices when a band plays a venue is something I have never agreed with. Nor do I agree with massive scale venues dominating over local struggling establishments because they can offer the artists more money. I digress.
An hour later, I receive a response from said venue…
This surprised me. At first, I was fairly taken aback that such a huge establishment had bothered to reply to me. If anything, I was a little humbled. Was the company scared that I might cause a PR catastrophe – that my 185 followers (mostly businesses/spam accounts) might be hanging on my every word and form a collective, negative opinion of the place? Was I David to their Goliath? No, that couldn’t have been it.
It then crossed my mind that maybe I had personally offended someone who worked for the company – someone infinitely loyal and proud of his or her employer – who simply could not leave me to have the last word.
Regardless of what prompted the UK’s biggest chain of venues to become so defensive at a passing comment that I doubt anyone even read, it certainly made me consider the role that social networking and social media now plays in terms of customer relations. Rewind several years, before the dawn of social networking, and the very notion of a massive scale company actually addressing a single member of the public would seem insane. That’s not to say it didn’t happen – there is such a thing as snail mail after all. The key difference with social networking platforms such as Twitter is that the response is there for all to see; meaning a certain degree of consideration must be made in order to preserve the reputation and integrity of the business.
Going back to the scolding I received last week, I think the individual in charge of company X’s Twitter account should have perhaps given his/her choice of words a bit more thought – maybe even avoid addressing the issue to begin with. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve no problem facing the consequences of my actions. I had after all insulted a huge company in a passive way, and they were perfectly within their rights to make their case. But the combination of the fruitless adage ‘the price reflects what you get’, their addressing me as ‘mate’ and linking to an award nomination that I hadn’t even heard of did nothing to make me regret my words nor reconsider my opinion of their brand. More importantly, if anyone else happened to see this exchange in their timeline, I doubt it did little to improve their reputation in their eyes either.
In fact, I’m fairly confident that any legitimate argument they may have for their overpriced, watered down beer or their efforts at keeping the word ‘industry’ into ‘music industry’ would take far more than 140 characters, making me wish they hadn’t bothered.
My point? If large scale businesses with a reputation to maintain wish to engage with the public through social media, they need to realise the potential that tools such as Twitter and Tumblr allow them and how it can affect their reputation, for good or for worse.
Other than my personal experience with a questionable use of Twitter last week, I can think of a few examples of huge companies getting social media all wrong. One that springs to mind (possibly because it was hilarious) is McDonald’s very genuine response to a very sarcastic tweet from comedian Rob Delaney. It went like this:
Ugh. Whilst I laughed a lot at the naivety of this unfortunate soul piloting the McDonald’s Twitter account, each laugh was punctuated with a cringe. Had the employee not taken a second to find that this was razor-sharp witted Rob Delaney, mocking the ineffectiveness and transparency of their desperately ‘zany’ advertising tactics? All it took was one click and they could have spared themselves embarrassing themselves in front of 330,000 of Delaney’s followers.
On the flipside, I’ve seen businesses do a good job of coming across as savvy, approachable and good natured. Take my friend Sarah, whose profile picture is that of her head, only squashed by one of the many photo manipulation apps.
Whilst boarding a train, she nearly got trapped in the door, prompting her to tweet ‘Nearly got stuck in the @eastcoastuk train door! #closecall’. East Coast Trains responded with ‘We’re sorry If our door caused that to happen to your head!’. I laughed. Here was a company showing the Twitterverse that they have a sense of humour and will take the time to converse with their followers, even if it’s just for a light hearted joke.
In fact, one glance at the East Coast Trains Twitter reveals a company who spends a majority of their online time replying to passengers, even when it isn’t necessary:
Clearly, there are more companies out there who use Twitter to interact with their followers rather than relentlessly promote their brand, but the folks at East Coast are lucky in that they happened to make me and my friend laugh, and therefore get a mention.
Let us not overlook Starbucks and their innovative use of the iPhone photo-sharing app Instagram, either. Visit their profile and you’ll find ‘behind the scenes’ photos of bean-roasting machines, coffee-tasting in the boardroom, insights into new products, and more. This allows the customers to feel more personally involved with the brand, as well as share their own coffee-inspired photographs by utilising the #starbucks hashtag. All in all, this is one of the most innovative and rewarding uses of social networking by a business I’ve seen to date.
The arrival of the digital age has opened numerous doors for businesses and customers to communicate like never before. It is the business’ responsibility to ensure that they are using tools such as Twitter and Facebook to their potential, engaging with the public in a way that will enrich their reputation and create a human bond that could not be established previously. Otherwise, they risk looking unprofessional and, even worse, stupid.
Let me close on perhaps my favourite Twitter mention to date. This one comes from the president of the United States no less. The date was February 14th.
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