A company’s image is one of the most valuable assets that they own. Should anything happen to that image, companies can quickly discover that everything they have worked hard to achieve over the years evaporates in front of their eyes in a matter of days.
In this day of Email, Facebook, and Twitter, bad customer service can quickly spread throughout networks. Take the example of Papa Johns, a well known chain of pizza restaurants. During the first week of January, a customer named Minhee Cho was described on her receipt by an ethnic slur. She posted the image of the receipt to her Twitter page on Friday, by Sunday it had over 200,000 views.
On Saturday, Papa Johns issued an apology via their Facebook page. To put into context the scale of bad publicity, there were over 4,500 mentions on their Twitter handle (@PapaJohns) on Saturday verses their normal 50-80 a day). Their fast response and quick termination of the employee who was responsible for the slur should help minimize the damage, yet even a few weeks later, the incident still showed up on the first page of Google’s search results.
Another recent case of a PR disaster is the case of the N-Control, an after-market controller for the Sony Playstation 3. The email conversation between the customer inquiring about the status of a controller that he had purchased a month earlier and the third party marketing contractor is jaw-dropping. In this case, the disaster nearly destroyed the company before it got its brand new product out.
This goes to show how no matter how much you put into your product and the marketing, if you’re not backing it up with trained employees and outstanding customer service, it can all be for nothing. If a customer has a bad experience, they are likely to tell 9 people over the course of a day. In this age of social media, mobile apps, texting, etc., a post of their bad experience online can be seen by thousands in minutes. That’s the power of the internet.
So how does a small company prevent this? Whether you do everything in house, or hire a company/outside consultant, make sure there are clear guidelines and escalation channels. Create an atmosphere where if there was a confrontation/mis-understanding/mistake that it can be brought to the attention to decision-makers and quickly resolved. Ignoring the problem won’t help, it’s best to tackle it.
Also it is important that you have channels to get your message out. Make use of your email lists, social media, and your website. Keep an eye on your online presence. Check in on review sites (Yelp, Angies List, Google Places, etc) , respond to criticisms in a responsible way. Remember, it just takes one customer with a bad experience to cancel out hundreds of customers with good experiences.