Art World
YouTube And Others Expose You To The Whole Wide World
In early July, a musician who felt United Airlines damaged his guitar on a flight was so fed up with trying to get reimbursed that he wrote a song, made a video and posted it to YouTube. Titled “United Breaks Guitars,” the video was viewed more than 2.5 million times in less than a week. As a result of the video’s popularity, United contacted the musician and offered to reimburse him for his guitar, but the damage was already done.
The old adage that a satisfied customer will tell three people about the experience while an unsatisfied customer will tell 10 people, no longer holds true. With the advent of blogs, Twitter, and YouTube – the ubiquitous Web 2.0 - disgruntled customers can now share their rant about a company with the whole world. And the bad news is, a lot of people are listening. The good news? Companies can use this very same “megaphone,” if you will, to not only keep consumers who may become disgruntled, but even gain new customers.
On Aug. 27, Heather Armstrong, a blogger from Salt Lake City, had difficulty getting Whirlpool Corporation to fix a washing machine she had recently purchased, so she took to Twitter to air her grievances. Within hours Armstrong was contacted by a Whirlpool representative, who sent a repair person to fix the machine the next day. Customer saved.
Whirlpool wasn’t the only company to notice Armstrong’s Tweets, however. Bosch Appliances also contacted Armstrong and offered to give her a free washing machine for her troubles with Whirlpool. Armstrong told Bosch that Whirlpool had fixed the problem, but she would accept their offer if they donated the machine to the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake City, a women’s shelter. Bosch agreed, and announced the donation over their Twitter account. Customers gained.
In the same way an online rant can damage a company’s reputation, successfully handling complaints online can showcase a company’s dedication to customer service, setting it apart from the competition. Companies such as Comcast and Zappos.com, for example, have received loads of praise for maintaining Twitter accounts to respond to tweets from unhappy customers.
Customer complaints can be found on customer review sites including Yelp.com and CitySearch.com, blogs, on Twitter, YouTube and in comment sections of newspapers online. Regardless of where the complaint is found online, the Better Business Bureau offers the following advice to small business owners on responding to customer rants:
- Continually monitor online conversation. In addition to searching the aforementioned review websites, there are other tools you can use to monitor who is talking about your company online. Backtype.com and Google Alerts will send you e-mail messages when people post comments online or if your company is mentioned in the news, respectively.
- Pick your battles. Depending on the size of your business, it can be time consuming to address every blog post, comment or tweet. When choosing rants to respond to, look for those that are less than a few days old, on prominent sites and are about problems you can solve.
- Offer full disclosure. When defending your company online, don’t pretend to be an unbiased consumer. Tech savvy individuals can easily deduce who is behind comments so it’s best to be honest and admit up-front you represent the company.
- Take the conversation offline. Some companies have made the mistake of hashing out disputes online for everyone to see. Instead, keep online responses polite and direct and ask the customer if you can contact them directly by e-mail or phone to discuss the specific details of their complaint.
- Don’t say anything privately you wouldn’t want made public. Just because you’ve taken the conversation offline, it doesn’t mean your e-mails and phone conversations won’t end up on the Internet, so always remain polite and professional.
- Follow through. Don’t drop the conversation when resolving a dispute and always follow through on promises. Consider providing a little extra perk, such as coupons, after the issue has been resolved.
- Know when to walk away. Sometimes there’s no satisfying an angry customer and at times a small business owner can only offer a sincere apology and walk away from the conversation.
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