Every once in awhile, a brand will take you by surprise, but rarely will you be surprised by three, all in one day, using social media. Believe it or not, that actually happened to me yesterday.
Over the weekend, my wife’s car was broken into while parked in a hotel parking lot outside of Baltimore, Maryland – the thief made off with a GPS unit. Consequently, yesterday morning we needed to find someone to repair the window that was broken. We called two national autoglass chains, Safelite and Glass Doctor, for quotes and appointment times.
First up, Safelite. The woman on the phone was very sympathetic and quickly gave her a quote and a number of potential appointment times. When my wife mentioned that she was going to get a few other quotes, the woman was very understanding, wished her luck and told her that she could call her should she have any trouble or other questions.
My wife then called Glass Doctor where the woman she spoke with continually confused which window needed repairing, quoted her three different prices, and sounded as if she had been out late the night before. Not a good experience.
In the end, despite being $100 more expensive, quality customer service won out, we chose Safelite.
Being the social media geek that I am, I immediately tweeted that customer service is king – using the real world experience as an example. Within 10 minutes, I received replies from both @Safelite and @Glassdoctor1. @Safelite thanked me for the kind words while @Glassdoctor1 apologized and traded a few messages with me to get to the bottom of the issue, promising to follow up with the local sales office to address the problem. Both very good experiences for me and definitely impacted how I perceived their brands.
Finally, wouldn’t you know that my day ended with me receiving an email from the casting company for Hasbro’s Cranium, inquiring if I would like to submit a video that could potentially be used in a Cranium commercial. So, how did they know my friends and play Cranium? (OK, played Cranium – all my Cranium activity was pre-baby). Well, they found photos I had posted on Flickr over two years ago and sent me an email through Flickr with the invite. Again, I was very surprised, but excited to see a brand I already like reinforce that positive image by engaging me where I spend time on a daily basis.
I mention these three examples because you constantly read how more prominent brands like Coke or Comcast use Twitter and Facebook to connect with their customers. But, you would never expect an autoglass company or a cult game to use social media the same way. However, they do what I talk with our clients about all the time – they use social media to listen and affect the customer experience. They use social media to engage their customers in a conversation and shape their brand perception. These three brands prove that regardless of size or industry every brand should be listening to what people are saying about them, because people ARE talking. And when your customers DO talk, you should be there to talk back.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my buddy and I have to demonstrate two people playing frisbee without talking. Oh, and if you happen to stumble across a three year old GPS unit with outdated maps, sigh, send it my way.
