Coles may have sold $18.3 billion of goods in the six months to December 31, but it appears that all of this cash isn’t enough to buy it a social media strategy.
The company asked Twitter followers to finish the sentence, “in my house it’s a crime not to buy…” back in March. Users responded with negative comments, including remarks accusing the company of putting unfair pressure on local producers.
The next stuff-up came in August, where a negative comment on Coles’ Facebook page received more than 73,000 ‘likes’ and 4,000 comments.
Coles took more than two days to respond to the comment, which criticised the grocery giant for the pressure it puts on dairy farmers with its cheap milk prices.
James Griffin, head of online reputation management business SR7, told SmartCompany while the actual response to the comment was fine, it was the second incident within a few months for Coles.
“I appreciate here the incident was something they perhaps didn’t see coming, and it’s an issue many Australians feel quite strongly about.”
“But I think the comments from the Coles person suggest they didn’t have a plan to deal with what unfolded for them. The numbers alone, 70,000 shares, that’s massive for an Australian issue.”
Is a famous person tweeting about your business? Great! But, wait – what if they are complaining about something?
The negative publicity associated with a customer complaint is manifold when it comes from someone with a large following, as Time Warner Cable found to its cost last year.
Actor Sir Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek fame, vented his fury at the company on Twitter due to the time taken to install cable in his new apartment.
Time Warner Cable replied to Stewart within two minutes, which is pretty good going. Only to be given short shrift:
The next day, perhaps having read a handy guide on the informality of dealing with customers on social media, Time Warner Cable decided to make a rather flippant response to Stewart without actually fixing the problem:
Social media is a great way to interact with potential customers in a less formalised way than your standard sales or customer service call. But don’t forget the basics of fixing the problem before you get jovial with irate followers.
Finally, as a general rule, it’s best to not to tell your customers to ‘go f*ck yourself’, as one US restaurant decided to do when faced with a complaint:
