Company B: Again, social media brand monitoring failure

by Michelle Mangen on November 17, 2009

in Small Business Ideas,Twitter

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Another example of social media brand monitoring failure

Yesterday I wrote how about how Company A failed to properly monitor their brand on Social Media.

Now let’s move to Company B. Company B is a web hosting company who I was chatting with a friend about in public stream about their their “green” hosting and how affordable their services were.

Within a matter of minutes they responded and were even so kind as to offer a coupon for a percentage off of annual hosting.  Score – who can argue with that? I quickly applied the given code at the time of my purchase.

So far….so good….website building has begun.

Three hours later…I’m stressed beyond belief that the website I am building is taking well over one minute to load (which is an eternity in the online world).

Several Twitter friends are aware that I’m building this particular site and are tweeting asking how things are going. Publicly I’m complaining about awful load times (and referencing their company when asked who I am hosting with).

Nada…nothing….zilch…not a single comment from them.

I contact support via the chat option on their website….beyond despicable. I’ll sum up the highlights of the conversations (yes, all 7 of them):

  • The site is loading in 3 seconds on our end (um, I’ve had 12 different people test it all with the same results-some with load times of up to 2 minutes)
  • Sorry that we don’t have cPanel, we have our own stuff (should that have been obvious before I placed my order?)
  • Oh, you need configuration information? Yes, it’s not easy to find but here you go (at least they told me, but again, shouldn’t it be easier to find?)
  • I’ll pass your concerns on to someone else (translated to: I am working from a script and cannot deviate from it)
  • I realize you verified your information in the six other times you contacted us but I still need to confirm all account info (again: script)

The end result? I canceled the hosting the same day that I bought it. As a result of sharing my saga with Twitter friends I discovered that my friend @OwenGreaves is not only a great social media blogger but he also has a website hosting company. His plans are also quite affordable and he is always super helpful on Twitter so I know I’ll get Class A customer service if I run into any issues.

What Company B did do right is that they did promptly pick up on my conversation regarding their services and it was great to be offered a discount code via Twitter. However, like Company A, they also failed to jump into the conversation when I was expressing my dissatisfaction with their online support help desk.

Tomorrow: Company C….what do you think? Did they fare better?

Thursday’s post will wrap up with tools to use and will also reference a recent, related blog post by a friend on filtering and monitoring.

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  • http://www.scoutlabs.com Jennifer Zeszut

    Hi Michelle. Thanks for sharing this! What is interesting about your post (I didn’t experience the frustration first-hand so I have the luxury of being analytical about it all! sorry!) is the EXPECTATION that you – we all – have that companies will be listening and responding in real-time. This is a new world for MANY companies that are used to listening to customers once a year in Q3 when they have some focus group budget to spend! Of course I am being a tad dramatic — call centers have people sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, but how often do you pick up the phone and proactively complain these days? I would image your answer is “a lot less than I used to” and its thanks to social media. Thanks again for sharing, and listen-up companies! The expectations bar has been raised.
    Jennifer Zeszut
    Scout Labs

    • http://www.thevirtualasst.com Michelle Mangen

      Jennifer – thanks so much for stopping by to leave a comment.

      In this particular case it wasn’t so much about having support in real time, rather that when I did get support they were not actually helpful. They insisted there was no problem. And with that because I had contacted them so many times over a short period of time the same day that I purchased the hosting package the likelyhood that my contact info had changed was nill….they were so scripted that they didn’t put the “common sense” into the equation. I do realize companies want employees to act in a certain manner while using certain steps to achieve a semblance of routine and structure but when a customer says – yes, I verified info with the last few techs I spoke to can we skip this step it would seem that saying, “OK, we can skip this step” would be more suitable.

      As far as them not responding on Twitter – again, not so much about responding in real time…they just never responded (except when I was considering purchasing my hosting plan from them.) They left off the other part….which was….I see you complaining; how can we be better as a company?”

      Yes, you are right – companies utilizing social media must now realize that the bar has been raised. :-)

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