Pessimistic Publicity – how social media can create and combat customer complaints

It’s ultimately what everyone from the one-man band to the household brand is dreading – a negative review, comment or news story. Careful planning and an honest mind are essentially the basic steps to avoiding this, but not everyone can get it right. We can however learn from their mistakes and follow basic steps to leave your worries behind…

When Habitat UK decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon in June they spotted what they thought would be a great way of appearing in popular search – by adding #hashtags at the beginning of their Tweets…that had absolutely nothing to do with them! Even inserting keywords linked to the current state of unrest in Iran which, lets be honest, should be against any corporate policy.

What was @HabitatUKs response when they were found out? (Set your face to shock) They deleted the offending Tweets and released a statement blaming an intern a few days later. Ouch.

“The hashtags were uploaded without Habitat’s authorisation by an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions,” a spokesman said.

In contrast, Dell has seen nothing but positive coverage about their customer service response team working on Twitter. They employ two people full-time to scan and monitor the social networking scene for any complaints or reported issues and deal with them quickly. Hey presto!

So what could HabitatUK have learnt from Dell and how you should act in a crisis…

• Firstly, immediately apologise by releasing a statement
• Admit to the mistake – don’t pass the blame on an intern
• @replied everyone who made a comment to them about using #hashtags
• Internally build an action plan to ensure this never happens again
• Run a campaign on Twitter to improve communications and build brand within the community

As you can see, it’s not rocket science! Yes social networking is a great, instant promotional tool to integrate but while it’s in the early stages, mistakes are easily made because companies expect instant results. Just like traditional PR, advertising and any other type of marketing…reputation is developed over a long period of time but can be ruined in minutes. Take care, check and double-check please.

Lauren