Let me give you a personal example: About two months ago, a mechanical arm that lets people in and out of the parking lot was stuck in the up position, and I was stranded in the parking lot of the Long Beach airport for nearly an hour, longer than my actual flight from Oakland back home. They wouldn't let anyone leave or pay cash, and the natives were growing restless. I contemplated walking home, begged them to take my money, pleaded for escape, offered them my organs etc.As the ever-growing line of cars waited, I hopped on my iPhone and researched the company who managed the lot, called my city council member who oversees the airport, called the company, and e-mailed the local office. As an angry, tired Irishman, it was hard to keep my cool, but I left confident that the wrong would be righted. Once home, I tweeted some pics, posted a Yelp review, let my 600 friends on Facebook know that they should rethink parking at the Long Beach airport, and posted on their Yahoo stock page. (Overkill yes, but I was pissed).
By noon the next day, I had received an e-mail and a phone call from an Executive Vice President at the parking company about my barrage of complaints. Note, this is a multi-billion dollar company, and he sounded panicked. What happened? How can we make this right? Do you want a refund? Can you retract your posts? Do you want a hug?
WOW! 12 hours before, his company was holding me and about two-dozen other people hostage, and now they wanted to be my best friend. Being a semi-reasonable guy, I accepted their indemnification, and wrote a letter commending them for good customer service. Seriously, they did a good job making things right.
Welcome friends to the power of social media.
A few years ago, getting this kind of bend over backwards response was impossible. Given a few well placed messages, I went from angry customer to happy panda. Think about it, by 10am the very next day, this problem was totally resolved.
So here it what you need to learn from this experience- you can use this power for your own benefit. Tools like Twitter and LinkedIn allow a 1 to many communication, and the organization you mention, other current and potential customers and their competitors can all see the messages you broadcast. You wield tremendous power to share your experiences- good and bad with the world. Examples like the United Airlines guitar guy are perfect examples of your power as a consumer.
Spiderman put it best, with great power comes great responsibility. I firmly believe that as an end user, you have a duty to be heard, and to air your legitimate complaints for the world to see. Likewise, if you have a GOOD experience with a vendor, please share it. Places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social networks are a powerful platform to express yourself.
I would love to hear other people's experiences with using social media to resolve issues, or your experiences with Pandas. Pandas are AWESOME.
Good job, Dan! It truly is a different world today, and hopefully the general public can grow to use the technology to improve society (fix problems like this, report crime, semi-anonymous eyewitness accounts, etc.) to make the world a better place.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience with Home Depot. Couldn't get resolution going the traditional route - store manager, corporate communications, etc. Once I answered an Andyasks question on Twitter about my last negative customer service experience, they wanted to take care of my problem. I was amazed that the traditional route didn't work but 140 characters later, I was a happy panda.
ReplyDeleteHey Dan. Nice post. It's interesting to see the power dynamic change so radically within a small period of time. Suddenly one bad incident can turn into a PR nightmare for a company. First all let me say that I whole heartedly agree with everything you did. I guess my only hesitation is that this can also lead to consumer abuse. It's easy to side with the consumer when we talk about this in the context of your battle with a large billion dollar corporation that is making unfair demands, but what about the inverse?
ReplyDeleteIs it also okay that a vindictive consumer can make a sizable impact on a small business because of an incident that they may be blowing entirely out of proportion. I can still remember being in a small consumer electronic store and watching someone yell at employee for an hour about how he should be able to return a TV outside of its warranty period that looked like it was put through an industrial blender. He can now go and post on yelp, facebook, etc - but where is his accountability?