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Twitter and the "Black Box" of Reputation Management
August 18, 2008
I keep reading stories about social media sites like Twitter and how they're revolutionizing customer service. Comcast. H&R Block. Southwest Airlines. On and on. (The organic tie-in here is that for many companies, pages like Twitter profiles -- as well as the news stories that discuss them -- are already showing up on SERPs for company names, and that's going to continue for a while.)
All this is great, of course. But at the same time, it reminds me of an old joke I'm sure you've heard. If an airplane's "black box" is the single, indestructible element of the plane that is nearly always recoverable after a crash, why don't they just make the whole plane out of black box?
Silly, I know. But similarly, if using something like Twitter is the perfect, efficacious form of customer service we've all been waiting for, why is it the exception instead of the rule? Why do companies frequently use social media to apologize for more traditional forms of customer service that garner complaints, instead of propagating these rapid-response techniques across their traditional customer service and support environments? It's a cynical perspective, but I think one reason that Twitter users get quick reaction and kid-glove treatment is that their complaints "have legs." In other words, they're being broadcast to the world, not just to the company. If a company doesn't respond to your forum post or answer your email, yet they respond to your Tweet in 12 minutes, part of you should be happy, and part of you should be angry. You're being addressed because your method of complaint has the most potential to harm them.
If a company had a queue set up so that any 800 call or support forum post that languished unanswered for 24 hours was re-broadcast as a press release, now THAT would be some accountability.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at August 18, 2008 03:12 PM
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