When is it OK to call out a company?

Hi Jed,

I think a customer should be ok to turn to social media at any time to talk about their experiences, whether positive or negative, as long as it is factual and not biased. I know this is never going to happen in a lot of cases! If I have had a great experience with a company, I may turn to social media and tell my network all about it. If I have a bad experience, I may do exactly the same. As long as I am telling the truth, a company should not have a problem with me doing this. The fact that my words are now recorded and not just going in one ear of a friend and out the other, it means that if I genuinly do say something that is false and a company spots it, it may lead to legal action as I would effectively be publically publsihing information about them which they may consider to be false.

To answer your other question, if I have the opportunity to raise a complaint in the presence of a company then I will do so. I won’t tweet a complaint if I have had an easy opportunity to raise it directly to them. I remember seeing a blog post about this very issue – many people would rather get their phone out and tweet something than actually speak to the company face to face. Saying that, if a company uses social media as a way of communicating with customers and providing customer service, then they should be able to handle public complaints on these platforms. Users should not hesitate in the slightest when making public enquiries but when they are calling out companies, I think they should be a bit more careful. Not just because of the possible implications but because it is the right thing to do.

Thanks

Rob

Thanks for an excellent comment Rob.

I’ll position one of the reasons for this post. I am constantly seeing people making comments on Twitter like “XXX’s service sucks!” or “I’m never using XXX again”. These comments often come with little or no reasoning, or context behind them and I often wonder whether the people making the comments have done anything to try to get their issues resolved before complaining to the world. Quite often complaints are made about companies who aren’t on social media too (although you may say this is more-fool them). I couldn’t see legal action being taken for these comments as they aren’t factual and very little could be proved or disproved.

I can see from your comment that you are responsible with the way you try to get your issues resolved, which is great to hear!

Cheers,
Jed

Good post, Jed with a nice thought provoking question at the end. Robert’s comments sum up my general feelings about when it is OK to call out a company. Like Robert, I try to be careful.

One interesting note is that I’ve successfully used calling out a company via social media to get the actual problem resolved on more than one occasion. This has taught me that it’s just as important to decide HOW you will call a company out as it is to determine when you will call a company out.

Here’s a link to one of my most recent experiences where an Avis customer service supervisor fixed my problem after 5 other Avis representatives weren’t able to. http://www.toistersolutions.com/blog/2010/12/13/avis-update-all-is-well-that-ends-well-i-hope.html

Jed, you raise an excellent point, well-worth discussion.

I’d like to raise three points:

1. I agree with you, that it is the customer’s responsibility to speak the truth, regardless of medium. And the best way to do this is to simply state the facts, and let the reader draw their own conclusions.

2. But in reality, many consumers may choose to express their (irrational?) emotions, instead of facts. Therefore, it’s up to the reader to decipher an emotional rant from fact, when reading an on-line post. So, if a company is unjustly slandered, they’ll suffer no real harm, because the reader will figure out the truth.

3. Companies must absolutely, positively “listen” to the on-line conversations, so that they can respond. Social media presents a new fact of life, in that any consumer can slander a company. It may not be fair, and it may not be right, but it’s the new playing field that we’re on, lilke it or not. Therefore, companies must adpat and be ready to respond, and in some cases, defend their reputations from such “on-line terrorism.”

Your thoughts?

Jim Watson

Thanks for your excellent input Jim. I agree with you that there is also a responsibility on the reader to fully understand a complaint before they pass their own judgment on a situation and let it affect their own behaviour. This is tricky though, because as we know people can be easily influenced by others, particularly if the person making a complaint is seen as being influential or having expertise. I often wonder if people go to less lengths to question “influential” people on social media? I guess influence brings with it added responsibility to speak the truth.

You are also spot on about listening. Companies cannot afford to ignore what is being said about them on social media. There are too many opportunities for learning from their customers and too many risks arising from not responding to customers who are disgruntled in public. Listening should also be the first step a company takes into using social media. I have seen quite a few companies set up accounts, but not listen or respond to their customers once they are using their accounts. This is something I have blogged about before: http://jedlangdon.com/2010/04/your-twitter-presence-is-damaging-your-brand/

Thanks again for a brilliant contribution to the discussion.

Cheers,
Jed

Thanks for your comment, and for the link to your article about your Avis experience. Its quite alarming the numbers of examples we see of companies not resolving issues until they are raised on social media. Its almost like they aren’t high priority until they are in the public domain where they can damage the company’s reputation. From this perspective social media is fantastic for customers who want their issues resolved, but it’s a shame that it needs to go this far sometimes. I’ll take the discussion of your Avis experience over to your blog post…

I like your comment about it being important to decide HOW to call a company out. I think blog posts can be really effective because they allow the writer to set the context, which is difficult to do in 140 characters on a platform like Twitter.

With regards to the ‘when’ to call a company out, I think after 5 failed attempts to fix your problem you were well within your rights to take your complaints about Avis to social media!

Cheers,
Jed

It’s hard to control people’s postings on social media, now more than ever. Every little gripe is posted, even the smallest of things because I guess coming from the idea that they do it just because they can. I was tempted to complain at my twitter account the annoying tick that I experienced with a company’s site yesterday, but instead I just emailed them. And thankfully I did that cause once I rebooted my PC it went away, and I emailed them back and told them nvm.

You’re right, it can be difficult to stop yourself complaining on social media about little ‘gripes’ with companies. Sometimes I think that social media has given the customer an easy way out, in that they can turn to it before trying to resolve issues with a company. Of course in reality I am completely in favour of the transparency SM has brought, because it is forcing companies to face up to their problems and not hide them – I just don’t like the idea of honest companies being held to ransom by serial SM complainers!

Thanks for your great input into this conversation

Jed

Huge post man. Good points, and great question. Hard to say. Depends on what happens. If I sign up for a gym, then (because I’m moving and the gym has no location there) I need to cancel, I’ll go there and cancel. But when I go there, and the owners of the gym say “we provided you with a cheap membership to a great gym, we’re not providing you with paper” when I ask them for a piece of paper to put my name, address and reason for cancelling (with my signature) to complete the process, I think I have a pretty good reason to complain on social channels. I also think that in that situation (which did actually happen to me), that information should definitely be out there. It could certainly serve as a bit of a wake up call for the owners. 

I guess all circumstances are different but when a company does something that we would all agree is absurd and hurtful, that may be a good time to mention it to your 50 billion friends. 

Thanks for your input into the conversation Ryan. I completely agree that different circumstances will require different courses of action. I also think that you would be justified to complain via social media about the way your gym treated you – hey they might have even learned something about their business if they’d given you that piece of paper to write your reason for leaving! Out of interest, did you complain about them on social media, and if so, did they listen and respond?

Having agreed that all circumstances will require different action, I do think that in most situations the customer has a duty to try to resolve issues in a responsible way before ‘venting’ over social media. If the company still doesn’t play ball then more fool them! Guy Winch wrote a really good article on how to complain on social media recently – you might enjoy it: http://www.guywinch.com/venting-versus-complaining-on-twitter/

Thanks again for an excellent comment!

No, I didn’t complain on social, but I wrote a jolly review of them on a pretty popular review site! I think you’re right, we all have responsibility. Good point bro. Nice! I’ll check out that article. 

When I worked for service companies years ago, we didn’t have Social Media outlets back  then or at least they weren’t as popular as they are today. I remember seeing a video back then called, “Give em a pickle” and he said, that people tell less people about a service when it’s good, but will tell thousands of people when the service is bad. On the flip side, consumers have discovered how beneficial it is to express their pent up opinions or aggressions about a certain company. 

People will complain to just complain, so you really have to learn to take most “simple” complaints with a “grain of salt”.  Does this hurt the company at hand? It might like you said if they don’t respond. I feel companies are now forced to be accountable for their actions if they use Social Media outlets, but if they don’t they might be looked at as if they are still in the stone age. Most companies now all have some Facebook or Twitter Page. Even when I shop, I use social media outlets to determine how well a company is graded with their customers before plucking out my money. It’s the nature of the beast.   Great post Jed!

Thanks for taking the time to make a great comment Sonia. I’ve heard that statistic somewhere too, and I can agree with it…its seems to be human nature to complain at negative things than to praise the positive.

It’s really interesting that you say companies should take most simple complaints with a ‘grain of salt’, and you may well be right. The best companies will of course always look into complaints to see if they are justified – and that’s the other brilliant think about social media – it gives companies free feedback (if they are listening). Whether or not a negative comment over social media could hurt a company, would be dependent on a variety of factors I guess, such as the size of the company and the industry they operate in. The critical thing for all companies though, as you have said is that they respond to make their customer feel valued and to show potential customers that they take complaints seriously and want to right any wrongs.I always use social media to research something before I buy it now too…as a consumer don’t you just love this age of transparency?!

Thanks again for an awesome comment.

Yes I do love it because now companies have to listen. Consumers can break you if you are not careful. You don’t want to end up being a “one-hitter-quitter”. I think Social Media outlets are wonderful to measure how well your company is doing, but also to see actual comments and “hear” what people are actually talking about.  If companies don’t use this, you might as well cut your throat. People love telling what they like or don’t like about a particular feature or component. If your just set up to have people “buy” something and never find out if it doesn’t work or it sucks, your doomed before you know it. 

GREAT question and one I deal with (almost) daily. I’m the community manager for a real estate technology firm so I’ve experienced interactions with both happy and not so happy customers. Here’s what I’ve come to find… For the most part, customers either:

- Just want to get their voices/point of view heard and/or they want to feel that they’re issue is getting resolved,
- They didn’t get what they wanted so they resort to yelling via social media to get it.

In the first scenario, if you respond quickly and can provide some semblance of a solution or show that you’re addressing the issue and care to get it resolved, you really have an opportunity to win a customer over. In the latter scenario, that customer is just venting. For example, we have a 30 day cancellation policy. A client wanted to cancel 4 months in. So they turned to social to get their way. Those types of situations shouldn’t go ignored, they should be responded to as well. Acknowledge the person’s point of view, agree to disagree, be kind and move on.

For me personally, I’d never “call out” a company on social media. If I’m displeased with their service, I might kindly let them know by tweeting: “Just so you know, I’m disappointed.” But that would be the extend of it.

Thanks for your brilliant contribution to this conversation Ricardo, I really enjoy hearing examples and opinions from people who deal with customers through social media on a day-to-day basis.

I like the way you have separated the scenarios – the first scenario is useful for a company because it is feedback that they can act upon and as you have said, it gives them an opportunity to rectify things with the customer. I worry about the second scenario though, as I see it a lot on social media platforms and feel it doesn’t really benefit anyone. I could understand it IF a customer has been given really rough treatment by a company and can’t find any other way to get through to them, but venting, like in your example does seem to be gaining in frequency (as someone in the industry I would love to know if you agree with this?). It seems that this trend can only go upwards as well with consumers becoming ever more demanding and social media platforms continuing to grow.

I would also be interested to know how often you experience each of these scenarios, and which you feel is most common?

I love the transparency that social media brings and am all for customers discussing their problems with companies in an open, online space; but like you, logical, reasonable dialogue with the company is almost always the better option over venting in my book.