Miniature disasters and minor catastrophesThis weekend, I had the discomfort of witnessing a miniature social-media marketing disaster that never should have happened.
Bring me to my knees
Well I must be my own master
Or a miniature disaster will be
It will be the death of me
MyCarDoc.com has provided a positive experience to a significant number of Indianapolis residents in the past several years. In fact, this weekend’s events are the only bad publicity I’ve ever seen for them. In defense of proprietor John Cannon and his wife Suzan, they handled the fallout wonderfully. But by being proactive rather than reactive, I believe the whole mess could have been completely avoided.
The company got off lucky. They’ve got a great reputation and a well-established brand in the area. A less-strong company could be severely damaged by a hiccup such as this, so pay attention, small-business owners. We have a new case study as to why a proactive crisis communication plan needs to be Priority # 1 in everyone’s new-media strategy.
It was a perfect storm, of sorts. My editor at IndyGeek, John Fox, received some shoddy work from a (now former) employee of MyCarDoc. On Friday, September 3, I heard that John’s van was running worse after his $200-plus tuneup than it had been before. He and his wife had to postpone their Labor Day weekend trip because of these issues.
(note: Since both of the main characters in this narrative are named John, I’m going to simplify things by calling my editor, John Fox, Fox. The proprietor of MyCarDoc.com, John Cannon, will heretofor be known as Doc. Got it? Good! Let’s carry on then!)
Fox sent Doc a Twitter message around 11:00 a.m. on Friday. Unbeknownst to Fox, or well, any of us in Interweb-land, Doc’s Smartphone was on the fritz. He couldn’t check his Twitter, and did not get the message until some nine or ten hours later. By this time, a hopping-mad Fox had gone on quite the Twitter rampage:
At this time, I myself was freaked out by the fact that the employee who had disabled Fox’s van had also serviced MY car, unaware that said employee had already been terminated for negligent work and for doing personal errands while on the job. Would there be more damage to come?
I was also quite upset at the slow response time on Doc’s part, as I was also unaware he couldn’t access his tweets. I didn’t know Fox hadn’t tried to reach him the old-fashioned way, via phone.
I was this close to ending my own, up until then satisfactory, relationship with Doc’s shop.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only time I’ve seen issues in Doc’s Twitter reaction-time. I direct-messaged him about two months ago, in a panic, because my driver’s-side window was stuck in the down position and I needed advice. The entire night and half a day went by before I received a response. I should have just tried calling, but I didn’t have his number in my phone, so Twitter was my only resource at that moment.
Anyway, by the time Suzan Cannon jumped into the conversation, Fox had made six negative tweets. I’d made two. People were getting curious and concerned, tweeting Fox with questions about his experience. Within 24 hours, Suzan and I able to help facilitate a sorting-out of the issues, and my personal impression of the company was fully repaired. Suzan did a masterful job dealing with each of the FORTY-EIGHT disgruntled tweets that were generated by this unfortunate event. All repairs were done under warranty, free of charge.
Fortunately, Fox and Doc were able to talk man-to-man and resolve all issues by noon on Saturday, September 4. I saw Fox’s tweet on the issue and cheered:
Presently, I’m unable to see whether the debacle caused any permanent damage to MyCarDoc’s brand. I sincerely hope it did not.
I am relieved to see a positive end result, but disappointed at how simple it could have been to avoid this in the first place. Keep in mind, I’ve used MyCarDoc in the past, as a positive example of what to do as a successful social-media marketer. Doc is a liked guy, and this was the first negative publicity I’ve ever seen for his business. This is impressive. But if I had a say in strategy, I would say a beefing-up of technique is in order.
First of all, the moment their offending employee was terminated, I would have drafted a short announcement for the company blog, something like this:
Dear Valued Customers,I would then tweet the link to the blog-post, a few times, scheduled at four or five-hour intervals. This proactive approach would let customers know what to look for and what to expect. In addition, I would keep a Word copy of this post on file, to use as a basic template in case (God forbid) a similar issue should present itself in the future.
We have unfortunately had to let go of an employee due to below-standard performance. As a responsible, ASE-certified garage, we carefully screen and vet employees, and we are improving these processes to hopefully avoid future issues. Please know this employee’s failings are not a barometer for the standard of service you can expect from MyCarDoc.
We’d like to take this opportunity to re-state that MyCarDoc services are under warranty. If you notice an issue with the outcome of work received from this terminated employee, or any MyCarDoc mechanic, please come forward, let us know, and we will resolve your issue free of charge. If you haven’t noticed an issue, but did receive work from this terminated employee and have concerns, please call us so we can check over your vehicle for quality assurance.
We’re sorry for this issue, and we’re doing everything to make it right. We also appreciate your patience, as the termination of this employee has created a backlog. We’re working extended hours to get on track as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your friendship, and for your business.
Also, if I were Doc, the second I noticed my phone acting freaky, I would have called Suzan or a trusted employee, given the MyCarDoc Twitter login information over, and had a tweet sent out informing, “Due to technical difficulties, Twitter messages may have a substantial delay in response. Here’s our phone number, please call if you need quick assistance.” I would also set up some kind of alert-system, so direct messages from cute, panicked little women in need of advice (cough cough) would have quicker help to get out of panic-mode and on with life.
We all love our technology, but clearly, tech has hiccups. I hope the above example illustrates how important it is for any business, large or small, to have a solid contingency plan. More than one (VERY TRUSTED) person should have access to make crucial announcements, if the main social-media spokesperson is not available or is suffering a difficulty. Also, if you haven’t already, sit down –RIGHT NOW— and brainstorm potential risk scenarios, from minor to worst-case. Set up some templates for your blog and other new-media strategic outlets, in case Murphy’s Law should show its ugly face.
It just might save your business.
As I mentioned over Twitter the other night I was the one to call Doc about coming over to fix the issue on Friday morning. So I did speak to him on the phone, and he asked me to text him my address. I texted it to him, and also asked him to let me know approximately what time he'd be over the next morning. It was after never receiving a response from Doc that John tweeted him.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that we aren't allowed to express our discern on the matter in the way that we choose? I mean, it is after all free speech. And as someone who boasts about their use of social media in their business (you and me included), you would think that it would be acceptable to voice our opinions on the service we received, whether it be bad or good. Basically what you're saying is that since we aren't happy happy joy joy over our experience, that we have no right to inform people about the terrible service we had, regardless of whether or not it was settled in the end. Which to me isn't very fair, since we are entitled to our opinion and feelings as consumers.
Nope, that's actually not what I said at all. Consumers have a right, and even a duty, to be empowered, to demand appropriate service and to complain until the wrongs are righted.
ReplyDeleteThe point of this post was that a pretty big misunderstanding took place which, through being proactive rather than reactive in social-media strategy, groups can hopefully avoid in the future. You can't possibly plan for every single pitfall. It's avoidable by something so simple as having Suzan get into the mycardoc twitter account and say something like, "If you've tweeted us and not gotten a response, it's 'cause I can't see my account right now. Please call b/c I care about taking care of your needs," you know, something like that.
Then you'd have known to make an additional phone call, and voila.
I get that, initially, you called. But when no response was received in response to a tweet, several hours later, I'd have tried calling again. But, bottom line, the burden should not have been upon you to divine the intent of the mechanic. If they'd just said publicly "Hey, sorry guys, tech issue!" you'd have known, and possibly could have avoided most of the unfortunate, upsetting experience.
I tried posting a comment earlier about this but it got wiped out, so I'll try again.
ReplyDeleteOur intent was not to cause a problem with Doc, his brand or to hurt his business, but merely to have him understand
where we were coming from as consumers - customers of his product. We were angry because we felt that we were not
being heard (both with the initial Tweet about the time of the appt, as well as during the several time we tried to
explain ourselves).
Even now, our intention isn't to damage his business. We are consumers and we wanted to share feedback in a public
forum, not to start a lynch mob. Although, I can certainly see how our anger may have come across that way.
Being online forces businesses to be more transparent. If you have a problem, acknowledge it. Explain to your
customers what's going on, how it started and what you're going to do to minimize the impact to them and also the
steps you're taking to ensure it doesn't happen again. A friend of mine told me last night, 'customer problems are going to happen; it's how you deal with them that counts.'
Even after telling this to Doc, I felt like he was being defensive, saying I shouldn't tell him how to run his
social media stuff, since people come to him all the time for advice. That might be the case, but the point of my
feedback wasn't to bring him down, it was to let him know he could be doing a better job (i.e., constructive
criticism). Doc getting defensive with me about it told me two things: he didn't care about an angry customer's
feedback and he didn't care enough about my business to listen. I hope he reconsiders.
Bottom Line: our van was fixed, I am happy and the weekend wasn't a total loss. What we had to go through to get to
that point, though, was not satsifactory. I hope customers in the future are not impacted the way we were, although if they are, I would hope they would come forward in a public setting to air those grievances.
Customer service is a really hard problem. You don't just want to provide great work, you also want to fix problems quickly. You want to make sure that everyone knows that you're tremendously reliable and responsive, but you don't want people to be troubled by all the details when things go wrong. And of course to execute excellent customer service, you need to rely on both your employees to share your vision and your customers to let you know when they are experiencing challenges. Finally, all of your communication channels need to be open and clear at all times.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeful that My Car Doc has learned some lessons through this experience, and I appreciate Leah for documenting them here on the blog. Taking your offline business online has its advantages and drawbacks. More people can talk than ever before, which can hurt or help your business.