PentaVision's "What's Your Story?" Blog

Let me back up a week or two to the wineries using their Facebook pages to drive fans to visit the event and enjoy some of their wines. If you don’t know me, I’m a big fan of wine (and if you are, too, we need to meet!). When several of the wineries put out messages through their Facebook pages seeking volunteers for the event, I jumped at the opportunity.

I thought this would be a great opportunity to get to know a winery I wasn’t familiar with and connect with fellow wine enthusiasts. I responded to a wall post that I was interested. They promptly responded and asked that I email my mailing address to them so that they could mail me a free pass to attend the event (bonus!). I quickly dashed off an email with my address and excitedly awaited the arrival of my ticket. It was about a week until the festival and I was telling everyone to come and see me at the booth for the winery-that-shall-remain-nameless. I waited patiently for the mail to arrive and each day that passed, there was no wine pass. I started making excuses for the winery:  maybe they were waiting until the last minute and sending them at once; maybe because I lived farther away it was just taking longer.

The morning of the glorious wine festival arrived. I was nervous about the pass; where could it be? If I waited until the last possible minute to leave, I could catch the last potential mail delivery before the festival. I checked the winery’s Facebook page and someone from the winery had posted an update about festival, so I posted a simple response:  “I never received my pass for the event.”

The pass never arrived that morning – or any morning after that. And I never heard a response. Never an email or Facebook message from the winery explaining why I was never followed-up with or never received my pass. Let me again remind you I was volunteering for the winery and would be spending my Saturday helping them increase sales, engage with customers and increase their visibility in the wine community. I was really bummed and I never did end up going to the event.

I was thinking about this with a touch of sadness yesterday and decided to check the winery’s Facebook page. My comment was removed. Yes, the simple comment letting them know that I had never received my pass was gone. Why? Why would you turn what was already a negative experience with you into something worse? It was almost a slap in the face. I realized what I had been hearing a lot lately was true:  a lot of businesses are using social networks but don’t want to or don’t know how to really engage. And that is going to cost them in the long run – credibility is a commodity when you go social.

The curse of social networking is that you open yourself and/or your business to bad reviews, unhappy customers and negative feedback. The blessing is that you have a forum to find these people and address their concerns, remedy the situation and turn these could-be negative mouthpieces to the masses into satisfied customers and event advocates.

So, how can you make sure that you address these situations head-on? How can your business avoid being one that don’t utilize their social media for creating loyal customers (instead of people that complain/Tweet/blog) about their bad experiences with you? Here are five tips to keep it real:

1. Follow up

Just like emails and phone calls, your social network accounts are other ways to touch customers. If someone called you up to complain about your product or service, would you hang up them? Delete the voice message? Of course not! So don’t treat your Facebook page any differently.

2. Be authentic

I’ve heard several people in area businesses admit to using a “dummy” account or user to sway upset customers. Not only is this a really crummy thing to do, but it leaves the customer or fan feeling like the company didn’t take their issue seriously enough to contact them and address it. If you have an employee or family member operating your accounts, make sure this person isn’t just a Facebook junkie. This person needs to understand how social media is just a part of an overall integrated marketing strategy that encompasses customer service and internal marketing.

3. Start public

Allow fans or customers to post their complaints and use the venue to publicly acknowledge the concern. Every fan or customer will know that you actually read the feedback and recognize then problem. Simply state that you apologize for the problem/confusion/misunderstanding and then…

4. Make it private

No one wants to see you and the customer duke it out via Facebook or Twitter. Ask the customer for the best way to contact them to address the issue and then do it.

5. React in a timely manner

Waiting six weeks to get back to a ticked off customer is not going to get a really positive response. Nothing says “we don’t care” like treating a customer’s concerns  like an afterthought. Think of the things this customer could tell others via the Internet through blogs, forums, social networks and email, in addition to word-of-mouth in six weeks’ time. A lot of damage can be done. By reacting quickly, you have the opportunity to turn around what started as a bad situation before it becomes worse.

Don’t be this winery. Don’t be the host of businesses with “fake” accounts, those that remove comments and ignore concerns. Don’t get into an argument with customers online. It’s time to get real. If you want need some help “keeping it real,” shoot me an email (missy@pentavision.net) or pick up the phone and give PentaVision a call (574-272-8365).