Last night, I was online trying to complete a Shutterfly order. I tried everything I could think of, but each time I would get to that purchase page, my system would lock up. Finally, I went to Twitter to find that I was not the only one and the folks at Shutterfly knew what was going on and were working to fix it.
I thought about 10 years ago when things didn't go right. People were on the phone, calling someone, anyone that could help. Undoubtedly they would hold for a while, sometimes hours to hear the same thing 100 people in front of them heard, "There are issues and we are working on them. Please try back later."
Instead of banging my head for hours, I went to Twitter. Instead of sitting on hold for who knows how long, I went to a resources that can have updates every second.
Two weeks ago, I had a less than perfect experience at a hotel and, following my own advice, I took the post trip survey. Within a day, the hotel had reviewed my post trip comments, acted on my comments and reached out to me about resolution.
This proves a few things to me:
1 - The marketplace is listening and they know when things aren't going well.
2 - Companies are reactive, but at lightning speed.
3 - Having a place to go, that in an instant tells me what I should do, or what I can expect as a resolution is not only nice, but necessary.
4 - Companies who ask me to leave a message and they will get back to me will be a thing of the past, very shortly.
Of course we want the issues to never happen, but when they do, recovery is huge! The companies who acknowledge the issues, tell their customers they hear them and really do something about it are winners. The biggest winners are the customers. I am not suggesting that every company needs a Twitter page because this isn't a Twitter promo blog. I, however, am suggesting that companies need to find a way to get feedback from their customers and a way to react to that feedback quickly, so they, like me, can keep going!
I thought about 10 years ago when things didn't go right. People were on the phone, calling someone, anyone that could help. Undoubtedly they would hold for a while, sometimes hours to hear the same thing 100 people in front of them heard, "There are issues and we are working on them. Please try back later."
Instead of banging my head for hours, I went to Twitter. Instead of sitting on hold for who knows how long, I went to a resources that can have updates every second.
Two weeks ago, I had a less than perfect experience at a hotel and, following my own advice, I took the post trip survey. Within a day, the hotel had reviewed my post trip comments, acted on my comments and reached out to me about resolution.
This proves a few things to me:
1 - The marketplace is listening and they know when things aren't going well.
2 - Companies are reactive, but at lightning speed.
3 - Having a place to go, that in an instant tells me what I should do, or what I can expect as a resolution is not only nice, but necessary.
4 - Companies who ask me to leave a message and they will get back to me will be a thing of the past, very shortly.
Of course we want the issues to never happen, but when they do, recovery is huge! The companies who acknowledge the issues, tell their customers they hear them and really do something about it are winners. The biggest winners are the customers. I am not suggesting that every company needs a Twitter page because this isn't a Twitter promo blog. I, however, am suggesting that companies need to find a way to get feedback from their customers and a way to react to that feedback quickly, so they, like me, can keep going!
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