In this digital age (which has actually been around for the last 15 years or so) more and more customers are using social media as a tool for customer service. It makes sense as you can just pick up your phone and type out a quick tweet to a company. Whoever you tweet will get an instant notification and most organisations will answer pretty quickly too, so it can work brilliantly for both parties.
But here’s the thing – it can also go badly wrong. Send a customer an email or answer their call and it’ll between the two of you. The customer might choose to share the contents, but it’s usually private. A tweet or a reply to message on a Facebook page, however, is there for all to see. And share. And comment on. Before you know it, your conversation has gone viral.
That’s great if people like what you’ve done for the customer, but not so good if they don’t. Even if the offending message is deleted, there’ll be screenshots around for all to see.
Virgin Trains showed how to get it wrong recently after a female passenger, Emily Cole, tweeted about a male train manager calling her and other female passengers ‘honey’. The train operator’s official Twitter account responded with: ‘Sorry for the mess up Emily, would you prefer “pet” or “love” next time?’.
The point of the initial complaint was to draw attention to the patronising attitude of the original staff member. By responding in a similar way, Virgin made it appear as though that’s […]
