Matching Customer Service Objectives Online and In-store
At a recent visit to a San Diego Mexican food restaurant I found an unfolded paper clip at the bottom of my margarita. Upon telling the restaurant manager about the situation, she comped not only the cost of my meal, but took care of the bill for the rest of the table as well.
While waiting to find out if the manager would remedy the situation, I of course tweeted my discontent. I did not receive a response from the restaurant. The restaurant missed this opportunity to fix the situation online as my Twitter followers were not at the restaurant to see the manager remedy the situation. All they knew was that the restaurant was unclean. This disconnect between online and offline customer service could easily have been corrected with an online response.
A company’s management style and customer service should be reflected both on and offline. Public perception of a brand can be seen through a social media personality and in on-site staff. It is equally concerning when a company has a great online presence and then the on-site customer service is sub-par.
An example of a company with great online and offline customer service is Pizza Fusion. The San Diego branch Twitter account is consistently active and responds to Bailey Gardiner staff tweets on a regular basis. In the event a follower tweets a complaint, @PizzaFusionSD is quick to address the concern in a personable manner. To demonstrate this, today I asked @PizzaFusionSD if they recommend any new menu items and in about an hour I received a response telling me about the gluten-free crust. They complement this online presence by having great in-store staff. Their team has even recognized the BG crew when we come by all our tweets about Free Pizza Fridays. This mix of online and offline customer service encourages us to frequent the restaurant more often. After all, good customer service often turns into customer loyalty.
Are your company’s customer service objectives aligned both online and in person? How does your company hold the online and in-store objectives together?
I think it’s unfair for a restaurant to have to be available to tweet all day, every day. Did you even check if the restaurant had a Twitter account? The restaurant manager did exactly what she should have done. It was an offline problem that she solved offline. I certainly hope that you tweeted to your followers that the problem was resolved quickly and to your satisfaction.
If it were Pizza Fusion that had the problem, I can see why you would expect an online response, but to assume every company has the manpower to Tweet or Facebook is a little absurd.
Katie,
First, thanks for reading my blog post.
To answer your question, yes, I did check to see if the restaurant had a Twitter account and they did, but it has been inactive since November 2009. You are correct that it was originally an offline problem, however the point of my post is that there is no such thing as a purely offline customer service issue. With so many smart phones and an abundance of social media platforms, any small issue has the potential of creating a big splash online. What if I had sent a twitpic of my paper clip and then some of my more influential followers had seen it and re-tweeted it. That could have a potentially bad result for the restaurant.
To answer you second question, yes, I did tweet to my followers that the restaurant had resolved the situation, which I truly appreciated. I worked in restaurants in college and I know how important it is to make this effort for customers.
And finally, I agree that not every company has the manpower to monitor social media at all times – but I believe it is about listening and doing what you can. It’s surprising the amount of very small businesses and restaurants using social media exceptionally well. Check out @cucinaurbana as an example.
Thanks for your comment.
-Jen
Jen,
Not really sure why you found it necessary to tweet about the situation before it was resolved. Was it to teach them a lesson by trying to damage their reputation? Punish the owners and employees for something that may not have even been their fault (maybe a patron dropped the paperclip into the glass at the bar)? I don’t know what else the manager could have done for you.
I think it’s time to realize that not everybody or every business has the time to tweet 24/7. Maybe their Twitter account was inactive because they didn’t find a strong ROI on the time put into constantly monitoring it. Or (shockingly) maybe they just didn’t have anything they felt was interesting to say—something more people could learn from.
The fact is that the great majority of businesses use online media as an additional communications channel for their core business. They don’t (and often shouldn’t) treat it as their core business. Just because tweeting is important to you, doesn’t mean it is to them.
When it comes to playing Tweet Police I think the first thing you should ask yourself is every time you made a mistake or did something regrettable would you want it tweeted to the world? Probably not.
I think it’s time to come off the social media high horse. Because you “of course tweeted [your] discontent” means that you could have done irreparable damage to someone’s reputation—their business. One that could have taken them years to build. And not to put too fine a point on it, every business is made up of real people. Not just some disembodied Twitter feed.
You said they remedied the situation. Now, I think it’s up to you to do the same. Online and offline.
Just my two cents.
Ian
PS—Before I get flamed or everyone decides to tweet, retweet, and hashtag me me into oblivion, I have no ties to the restaurant. I just believe a reputation is worth defending.
Hi Ian,
Great to hear from you! I appreciate your comment. I think the key here is that Jen wasn’t claiming the restaurant HAD to be on Twitter or that any business has to be on Twitter. Quite the opposite. We fully recognize that it isn’t a medium for everyone. However, one of the things we often work with our clients on is knowing where people are talking about you. And in this case, it appears people (or at least one person) was talking about them on Twitter. Therefore the restaurant’s lack of presence there is a missed opportunity. Is it the end of business as they know it – no. Could they have benefited from an online presence in this situation- yes.
And in defense of Jen, tweeting that there is a paperclip in her drink is entirely normal. I would be surprised if someone active on Twitter didn’t tweet that – you’ll see much much worse out there. And the fact that she actually took the time to tweet out that the situation had been resolved, makes her one of few. I can tell you from personal experience that people are a lot harsher on Twitter and a lot less likely to compliment a business once something has been resolved. It’s a reality of the medium and of the online world in general. If they weren’t doing it on on Twitter they’d be doing it on Facebook, Yelp, blogs etc.
I think your real issue here is with, Twitter, which won’t be resolved by disagreeing with one young woman’s tweet. I agree, the fact that this social network has the potential to harm a company’s reputation is the less flattering side of the social network. However, that sad fact is the reality, and that was the whole reason for her blog post.
Always appreciate your two cents Ian.
-Callan
People use the internet to compliment and complain about businesses. Regardless of the medium, this happens. If it didn’t – yelp and tripadvisor wouldn’t be around. Reputation management is part of every business in the real world and virtual world. Word of mouth has evoloved to a digital medium making it more accessible, and if the business didn’t want to be involved with twitter then they should not have an account.
Not everyone or every business is active online but this is def something that needs to be considered. Younger generations are changing communication models and if you don’t evolve and change you will be left behind. It’s happened with all forms of media and communication. Things change. Adapt.
Callan and Ryan,
My issue is nether with twitter nor the “younger generations changing communications models.” It’s the attitude that somehow “if they weren’t doing it on Twitter they’d be doing it on Facebook” makes potentially harming someone’s reputation right. Or that “if they didn’t want to be involved with Twitter, then they should not have an account.” Why? Who are you to decide who should and shouldn’t have an account or how they should use it?
In the end, this makes my point exactly. Just because you have a Facebook page, Twitter account, or are actively involved in any or all forms of social media, shouldn’t automatically give you the right to pass judgement on others.
Look, all I’m advocating is that you should think a bit before you tweet and not simply assume that anybody who isn’t actively involved in social media 24/7 is doing something wrong.
–Ian
Ian,
I’m not disagreeing with that last point, but the reality is that people don’t think a bit before they tweet and are often complaining and complimenting companies online. And no matter how unethical you think that may be, the fact is that isn’t changing.
The goal of this post wasn’t to pass judgment on anyone or any company for how they use or don’t use Twitter. (note Jen didn’t even refer to the Mexican restaurant by name). And not once in her post did Jen say the Mexican restaurant did something wrong. She simply pointed out the opportunity was missed and showed an example of a company who has ingratiated an entire office full of people by using good customer service both on and offline.
-Cliff
Ian what is the point of a business having a twitter account?
It is human nature to share information, to communicate, and to have opinions. Just like we are doing on this blog post. I don’t understand your point. If a consumer is not sharing their opinion on “twitter” or “facebook” they will share it somewhere. Maybe with their friends at their next dinner party. Maybe on a phone call with their family. Or on a review online. People have opinions and want to share them. That is why these types of online communications applications and sites are so popular. The consumer has the option to say what they want, when they want to who they want. It’s been happening for a while. Now it is just in real time.
To be fair, it’s not realistic to have the expectation of immediate response, especially in food service. Even the best social media listening campaign will miss tweets. Sure the restaurant has a Twitter feed, but maybe they have found that not to be a huge value to their core customer. Simply put, you might be on the fringe of their consumer base that isn’t their target. Without knowing if they have a communications/marketing strategy and what that is, it’s a bit presumptuous to throw them under the bus for not following your tweet. Really, it would be your responsibility as a responsible social media user to follow up your tweet of the paper clip issue with a tweet explaining how the manager resolved the situation.
I think as social media professionals we have to understand certain marketplaces and how some brands might be slow to the game. Doesn’t mean they are wrong, just means they have different objectives. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong either per se, just means in this instance perhaps it would have been more responsible to clearly communicate via social media yourself and use this as an opportunity to educate and share knowledge with the management of the restaurant.
Point I am trying to make: it is highly unfair to have the expectation for the restaurant to “fix your situation online.” Even if they had tweeted in response to you, your followers wouldn’t know unless you continued the conversation. Your followers only heard a negative story because you failed to finish telling the story in the first place.
Thanks for the comment, Jason. As I mentioned earlier, I did tweet out that the situation had been resolved and I’m sorry if it wasn’t clear that I don’t expect an immediate response. That wasn’t my point. My point was, in my opinion, the company could have benefited from being on Twitter the way so many other small companies are.
Thanks for reading!
-Jen
Hey Jen,
My apologies for not seeing your previous comment. I get where you were going with this. And to be fair, I agree in principle to what you’re saying. I agree small businesses especially need to better leverage social media, but only in as much as their stakeholders are interacting in that space. Otherwise, they are talking into the Grand Canyon. In this case, even if they had tweeted a response, unless you RT it, no one but their followers would have seen it. Really in this instance, they probably respsonded as best they should. Looking at this from a crisis management standpoint, airing this out on Twitter could have brought more attention then there was. Now if it is BP size crisis, then yes, definitely need a social media response.
Like Ryan pointed to, the internet is often a magnifying glass for what already goes on. As marketers, we know that “a happy customer tells 2 people, an unhappy one tells 10″ (pulling the numbers out of the air, but you see where I’m going).
These days, an unhappy customer is telling 100, 1,000, or more people about their experience. Brands NEED to recognize this, and whether they decide to be active or not, setting up an account that monitors their own brand name should be a no-brainer.
Social media can provide businesses a great opportunity to insert themselves into the conversation, but it can also amplify their mistakes exponentially as it did in this story.
Seems like a lot of people are focusing on what Jen did and whether that was right or wrong. It doesn’t matter. The key thing here is not that Jen tweeted something bad and how she handled it, but that SOMEONE tweeted something bad and it went down the way it did. Could have been Jen or any of 7 million other people. The salient point is that it happens. Smart businesses know that it happens and watch for it and have plans to handle it when it happens no matter how big or small they are.
If Jen tweets something negative to 2000 people, how can the company respond to those 2000 people? They can’t. More than likely, only Jen out of that group will see the “reputation saving” reply from the restaurant. So Jen’s tweet damages the reputation to 1999 people. Actually, probably far less because of her 2000 followers probably half of them never go on Twitter save for once a week, and most of the other half will miss it in their stream because they aren’t glued to it.
So unless a complaint becomes a movement (which was unlikely in this situation), the anger-releasing tweet never gets seen and only makes one person feel better: Jen.
One of Ian’s points seems to be that unfortunately Twitter has become, in addition to several other things both positive and negative, a convenient way for people to bitch in real time about little things irrespective of the damage it may cause to real people. And people feel that this is OK, or perhaps that they have a right to because, in their mind, they are the ones that are being offended. As Ryan insinuates, this is probably not going to stop.
Bitch less and save your time and energy for the big things that deserve bitching about. Then mexican restaurants working on a 15% margin don’t have to worry.
[...] While this report may not be the focus point of your strategy, it does offer great insight and a reminder to your client as to why they are on and should stay involved in social media. [...]
Thank you, Ryan. That was precisely what I was trying to say, but you said it very eloquently.