I have had a certain product break on me four times in the past three months. Each time I didn’t complain, just filled out the warranty, sent the product in and got a new one. Now the fourth time the product broke, I decided to take to social media because, quite frankly, I felt people should know about this and along with that, I really did want to see how they would respond if I posted negatively on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
I started by posting a long message on the brand’s Facebook wall, explaining all of the brand’s faults and how ridiculous of a situation I had been put through with their product. I posted this around 9:00 A.M. with hopes that they would respond quickly (negatively or positively) so I could either make a Facebook scene or in fact escalate this situation to someone at the company who could help me quickly. After posting on their Facebook wall, I took to Twitter and posted a couple of tweets on how bad their product is and the predicament I was in with the product breaking four times on me. I made sure to use @ mentions and keep a period in front so everyone who doesn’t follow both the brand and I could see it.
The following is how the brand handled the situation and what they did wrong/right:
The Good:
The brand crafted a great Facebook response, being extremely apologetic, actually stating the failure rate of the product (only 4.6 out of 100 these products fail at all, but yet I had 4 break in three months) and directing me to email them instead of continuing the conversation on Facebook (smart tactic).
The team also noticed that I had already filed three warranty claims on my prior product issues, so they didn’t require me to fill out a new one. Now, they didn’t tell me this originally which led to some confusion, but still it’s great that they looked into the system and noticed I have had issues with their products in the past.
Another strategy that their team used was road blocking. They posted positive, what looked like Facebook posts on top of my post, pushing my story down the page out of the sight of most consumers.
The Bad:
It took the brand four hours to either craft a social media strategy or four hours for them to notice my Facebook rant. This is not good and should have been handled in a much quicker fashion. If I had wanted to cause more of a stink, I could have and most people do. Almost everything in social is public; they should have responded much quicker.
The brand also never noticed my tweets and never responded. Again this was all public on Twitter and I could have caused a bigger scene, but for some reason they avoided me here. If I just had in fact ranted on Twitter and they didn’t respond, I would have caused a bigger scene to see how long it took them to react.
After taking the conversation offline and having me respond to a few things, it took them 14 hours to respond to a specific email that required a reply from them. Again, if I had wanted to I could have gone back to social media and made a scene about how they don’t care.
Social media is a 24 hour beast that can rear its head at any time. I am in fact impressed with how this brand handled the situation. The responses could have been quicker and more efficient, but they did the right thing by taking the conversation offline and essentially offering me an incentive to make me happy and stop posting about their brand. Remember, always be monitoring your social media outlets and be ready to respond to anything!
