Your Twitter presence is damaging your brand

by Jed on April 3, 2010

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine had a complaint to make about a pair of trainers he had bought from the website of a major UK sports retailer. After visiting their website again and finding an email address he emailed them his compaint, to which he received an automatic reply stating that they would respond within five working days. Not content with this he also discovered that they have a Twitter account, so tweeted them to see if he would receive a faster response.

This sports retailer isn’t known for it’s terrific customer service and operates a low cost-low service strategy, so nobody would expect any miracles. In fact, this isn’t a post about bad after sales service because within a week or so my friend had received a response via email offering him some of his money back. The situation had reached a satisfactory conclusion and my friend was happy. There was still no sign of a response on Twitter though, despite public tweets by my friend about his trainers and their lack of response.

The fact that this retailer has a Twitter account suggests that they are making some sort of attempt to build and maintain a relationship with their customers, even if they aren’t fully embracing social CRM. However, on inspection their account I discovered this description of their Twitter account:

“xxxxxx is the UK’s largest Sports Store! Follow us on Twitter to get all the latest deals and discounts and exclusive Twitter voucher codes”

This description and further investigation of the 29 tweets they have amassed since their first in April 2009 revealed that they use Twitter solely as a marketing channel. It also revealed that they see it as a one-way communcations tool, used to push messages to potential customers and nothing else. The fact that they only have 71 followers shows us that their marketing efforts aren’t particularly inspiring either.

In my eyes there are many things wrong with this companies Twitter presence, all of which could reflect badly on their brand:

- By viewing twitter as a one-way comms channel, the retailer is missing an opportunity to engage and build a relationship with their customers. In today’s social world customers expect to have more of a relationship with companies they buy from. Furthermore, not responding to customers who openly make an effort to communicate with you in full view of other customers, will not only damage your relationship with that customer but also any others who are watching the conversation.

- When a customer finds a company on Twitter they expect to be able to discuss customer service issues through this channel and they expect fast an efficient response (possibly even faster than with email). By restricting their use of Twitter to marketing, customers will become irritated when they attempt to discuss customer service matters with them.

- It is clear that this company have launched their Twitter account without any real thought or commitment as to how they are going to maintain their online presence. Any social media expert (which I am not) will tell you that before launching into any SM channels, take some time to understand the communication channel and what your stakeholders will expect of you, set yourself clear goals and objectives and formulate a strategy accordingly. It is clear this company has not followed any of these steps and the sporadic nature of their tweets highlights their lack of commitment.

It seems that there are still companies limping into using Twitter, probably hearing about it and thinking it will damage their brand not to have a presence. In my opinion this is what has happened in this case and the reality is that a social media presence with no clear strategy and which hasn’t been thought through properly is far more damaging to a brand.

The fortunate thing for this particular retailer is that because of their low cost-low service position in the market, this probably won’t hurt them significantly.

Tagged as: Customer Service, E-commerce, Marketing, Social Media

  • http://www.robertpickstone.com Robert Pickstone

    Nice post Jed.

    I much prefer to see companies engaging with their customers online and speaking WITH them rather than AT them. Some companies have been successful using Twitter as a one-way communication tool but there aren't many that I have seen.

    If the company you mention did make the decison to only use Twitter for promotional purproses, then it still doesn't look like they are monitering their brand online, because if they were they would have surely responded in some sort of way to acknowledge the enquiry. Even if this was not public – ie DM, phonecall, email.

    The 3 A's in a short tweet at least gives something to customers – Acknowledge, Apologize, Act. It lets them know that you are listening, even if you don't want to get into deeper customer service issues in public.

    Another scenario is that they are monitering their brand but have decided that even if customers are trying to speak to them online, they will not respond. I hope this is not the case!

    Like you said though, the account just looks like it has been set up quite lazily and not as part of any dedicated strategy. This is most likely. Please DM me with their details!

    Rob

  • http://www.jedlangdon.com/ Jed Langdon

    Thanks for your comment Rob. I completely agree with you that this company can't be monitoring their brand online. I really can't imagine a company monitoring comments on social networking sites and choosing not to respond. Having said that, perhaps my rose-tinted view of companies is clouding my judgement – I hope not!

    The 3 A's are a great format for responding to customers on social networking sites and as you have said, gives customers some confidence that you are doing something about the problem, which also looks better in front of onlookers. Thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.KristinaEvey.com Kristina Evey

    This is a good post. So many companies get their Twitter account, then don't use it for anything other than marketing.

    The whole point of social media is to be SOCIAL. Being social means engaging in a conversation or relationship. It is connecting with your customers. It means to help solve their problems for them. It is forming a partnership with them. It's getting to know them and how they benefit from your product and services.

    The benefit to the company is that the entire SM world can see them do all of these things online. They can see how they fix their own mistakes and make it better than right.

    You are good to point out that if they don't use their online presence – Twitter/Facebook- effectively, it can certainly hurt their brand.

  • http://www.jedlangdon.com/ Jed Langdon

    Thanks so much for commenting Kristina. It still amazes me how many companies aren't aware what a brilliant platform SM can be for dealing with customer service issues, if used
    well. Companies that do use it well have the advantage of being able to create brand advocates because, as you said, these conversations take place in public and this transparency creates trust.

  • http://www.christophevanbael.com Christophe Van Bael

    Hi Jed,

    Thank you for bringing this excellent post under my attention. I agree that:

    - companies that decide to ‘go social’ (not necessarily ‘be social’), should not do this before getting themselves acquainted with the tools and rules of the social media channels they are about to engage in;
    - companies should never dive into social media without a clear strategy. This strategy should at least include clear goals for the social media efforts, metrics to measure progress, a baseline to compare future success with, and an assessment of the customer base and its preferences (go where the customers and prospects are to have most effect).

    However, I don’t consider it a bad thing per se if companies want to use social media for marketing if these companies:

    - set the right expectations for their customers (such as “this is a marketing channel, please take advantage of our vouchers or tune out” > many of us forget that social media are still opt-in channels, so customers always have a choice to (not) follow a brand);
    - never ever fail to respond to customers that seek help through these channels regardless of why the companies use the channels. In such cases, companies should always try to respond, if not for their customers, then to protect their brand and the perception of their brand on social media.

    And… the most important point to me, as you rightly argue: social media is so much more than one-way push marketing. Companies that focus on customer-centricity first and that make a serious commitment to being social will get most benefits from their social media efforts. These companies will have a plan by default, and they will use social media primarily for engagement (in addition to customer service, marketing etc).

    As an aside, I see a growing number of brands with multiple Twitter accounts for customer service, marketing etc. I consider this a sound strategy to keep the purpose of the different accounts clear to both the customers and the company.

    Thanks again for sharing this post, Jed. Great work!

  • Anonymous

    Your post echoes a lot of “standard” thinking about social media. Engagement is not always a good business thing, and it’s used by most people without any understanding of what it means. The question not about your opinion or mine, but whether their use of twitter is actually damaging them in terms of sales, revenue and profits. This is business, not religion, and not about family relationships. If they aren’t telling us what is damaging their business, you and i don’t know, and it’s a little weird to pretend we do.

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