What’s That About The Squeaky Wheel?
I admit it, complaining is one of my top three non-work-related skills (the other two are karaoke and Wii Tennis–is it sad to admit this?).
Social media seems to blend quite nicely with complaining, doesn’t it?
Look at all the people popping up to point out that complaining about Comcast on Twitter appears to have increased the level of customer service they receive. Indeed, writing a whinging blog post about how Company X has done you wrong seems to be the best resource for frustrated consumers out there these days. Entire blogs are devoted to it.
I experienced a flight delay and some relatively unfriendly customer service from Southwest Airlines over the weekend. The check-in desk folks were rather dreadful to me, but the gate agents were downright delightful, confirming me onto an earlier flight no questions asked. And so, I Tweeted that Southwest was running about “50/50″ for me that day.
A couple days later, voila, a @ reply from Southwest Air. I didn’t even know they were on Twitter.
I didn’t respond. The issue had been dealt with, and I was fine. I’m not sure, even if I were still disgruntled, what they would have done, but I was fairly tickled to see that the company is even listening to Twitter at all. I shouldn’t have been surprised, Southwest has had one of the best corporate blogs for ages, it makes sense they’d be on Twitter too.
So is social media going to turn us all into a society of complainers? I already am one, it’s well documented and everyone who knows me knows it (have I told you about my cracked tooth yet?). But I can’t imagine everyone joining the chorus. Not to mention how unfair that is to the sweet-natured among us–don’t they deserve good customer service too?
I’m also tickled this week that my new bathing suit arrived from Victoria’s Secret (2 months after I initially ordered it) despite their customer service folks telling me it was backordered until the end of June. I sent many angry Tweets about this (they kept pushing back the date the stupid thing would be available)….is Victoria’s Secret listening too? Will my complaining always get me what I want?
In that case, I shall start complaining on Twitter (well, okay, complaining some more) about the lack of good looking, tall, charming, funny, men. That should do the trick, I imagine.
Filed under: Twitter
You raise a serious question (whether you realize it or not) in a light-hearted post. The question–”will my complaining always get me what I want?”–is a question that I hope every company that *is* responding to complaints in social media is pondering.
While it’s great, warm fuzzies all around for those who are reached out to when they do complain via Twitter, blogs, etc., a major problem I see is scalability. Not too long ago, Jerimah Owyang posted about a cruise ship line that “fired” a couple who had been customers. The customers had sailed with them 6 times, and complained–but loudly–about 5 of the trips. Each time, when they posted about problems, the company addressed the concerns. Sometimes, the results were quite generous (the problems seemed to range from bad to awful), but the couple posted the results.
Which led me to think: doesn’t this raise the bar for everyone in turn? At what point do companies just say *enough*?
Social media, for all its buzz, is still new on the adoption curve. If wider adoption occurs, an individual company’s ability to address those concerns–both in scale (sheer number of complaints) and in renumeration–will have to go down. Helping customers on the scale to which some have become accustomed won’t be possible.
I wonder if social media is setting some of these companies up for an even harder fall.
Wow, maybe I should write a post on this…
You make some excellent points. I think what the companies are doing is taking advantage of stuff like TWtiter before it goes mainstream.
While they can, they are reaching an influential (arguably) audience. I know that seeing all these posts about Comcast righting its own wrongs does make me feel fuzzier towards the company.
I’m also tempted, I admit, to complain on Twitter about the fact that Comcast costs like, ten billion kajillion dollars a month just for digital cable with HBO and an internet hookup, to see what would happen…
Your Comcast bill is significantly higher than mine. I pay $133 per month for phone/cable/Intarweb connection. If you are really paying ten billion kajillion dollars a month, you might want to call to see if you can get a discount.
Have you checked the pneumatic tubes going into your apartment? they might be clogged…