One thing that I’ve heard over and over about social media is stories about how people were so frustrated with a company that it ended up on social media and at that point their problem was solved. Stories about people not being able to take a flight because it was overbooked, complaining on Twitter then a competitor taking over the client by offering to help. Or someone complaining about their local gym and then having the Gym contact them directly to make sure they were satisfied. I had heard it often enough that when I was at my wits end recently trying to get support I turned to Social Media – and it worked!
I had been struggling with my Adobe Creative Cloud software and used both the online chat and telephone for support at least 3 times each and never had a permanent fix. It may have worked properly for a couple days, but then it would be back to it’s same problems. I finally put essentially a rant type post on Twitter (as much as someone can rant in 140 characters!) and tagged Adobe Creative Cloud in my post – within 24 hours I had been contacted by Adobe Creative Cloud, and Adobe Customer Care on Twitter and after a few tweets back and forth ended up being contacted by a Senior Support Technician who scheduled a time to help and we haven’t had any problems since! Classic case of squeaky wheel gets the grease!
So the next time you’re pulling your hair out trying to get some support from a company for a product of some sort to no avail – take it to Social Media! When it’s visible that someone isn’t happy with them you’d be amazed how quickly they’ll turn to help! And it really does make sense because if they are visible in their effort to help you it makes them look good instead of bad. What company would want some bad press online?
Of course you have to see the flip-side of that as well, if you’re the company that’s receiving the negative posts from an unhappy customer, what do you do about it? Deleting is not possible, Ignoring makes you look BAD so all you left with is that you need to address it. Take the opportunity to change the negative into a positive and improve your standing with not only the complaining customer but those that see the interaction as well – it’s an easy way to show you care!