Social Media: Bad Customer Service Has an Echo Chamber Online
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 16, 2009 | Share This
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I did something a few days ago I rarely if ever do. I lost it. I got really mad and went to a terrible terrible place. That place was the one where you end up holding your iPhone up to a customer service representative and saying “I work in social media! Do you know how bad this service is for your company’s reputation!”
Oh yes, and I had the negative tweets there to prove it.
I won’t go into the details of my horror story on Delta Airlines which prompted this outburst, but you can read more about it here on the Huffington Post.
The important thing to remember is that my Tweets (I did several of them), angry Facebook updates, and now a blog posting here and on The Huffington Post all become part of a company’s reputation online, a reputation that can cling and trail along like seaweed on a boat’s propeller. Too much seaweed and that propeller stops turning.
Delta’s bread and butter are business travelers looking for the least expensive way to get to a destination.When the negative customer reaction starts to clog up search reply pages and consumer reviews sites (as well as Twitter and Facebook) it becomes a question of whether you will even get to your destination in time for a meeting. A conference call is cheaper yet and more reliable.
Delta didn’t respond at all on Twitter - not a cardinal sin but not a surprise either considering their awful real world response. The lesson here is that other brands in industries that generate a lot of customer service issues such as Comcast have taken to Twitter as way to revitalize their customer service with a great deal of success.
In fact I was on my way to meet with a brand that we helped to set up a specific customer service Twitter feed for, and they couldn’t be more impressed with the results.
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Topics: Reputation Management, Social Media |