Further to our earlier post on the “United Breaks Guitars” video on YouTube – this seems to be the horror story I keep hearing about the uses (or rather lack of use) of social media.  But this was a PR nightmare for United that happened to come at a really bad time (just as they were finalizing a merger).  But it is also just like the PR nightmares that other companies have had; Social Media just happened to be the new channel for publicizing it.  But there is nothing really new or unique here.

Did you hear about Air Canada who lost a purpose built wheel chair for a disabled child in Florida?  It was in the paper.

Or about Coca Cola changing their formula? That was in the paper.

Or about The News of the World hacking in to voice mails?  Well, that WAS the paper.

But these are all PR nightmares, and social media acts as yet one more source of media concern for any company.

Even if United Airlines had implemented the world’s best social media engagement strategy; if they had their finger on the pulse of what everyone was saying about them in the twitter-verse; if they had a great blogging strategy; if they were fully engaged with Facebook; none of these would have made up for the fact that Dave Carroll (who wrote the song) had his guitar broken on a flight to Chicago, and then called the United Call Center repeatedly and without success BEFORE he ever wrote the song.

United policy at the time said, “Too bad, Dave.”  And no social media policy would have prevented this, as the damage had already been done.  The ‘cat-gut’ was already out of the bag.

Looking at this story another way, what if Mr. Joe Average had had a bad billing experience with say, his cell phone provider.  And what if Mr. Joe Average was a musician, or comedian, or even just an eloquent speech writer?  What Social Media does is give him an outlet through which he can easily vent his frustrations publically.  And if he is really good at what he does, then it’s quite possible that the video (or blog or social platform of your choice) could go viral and affect the stock price of that cell phone company, along with its reputation.

So, the moral of the story is really, don’t upset a musician.  Or a comedian.  Or orator.  And if you’re not sure that the person won’t vent publically and vent well, then you really do live in a world of ‘The Customer is Always Right” and you better make sure you treat them that way every time.  Or they might complain  on social media.

But no social media strategy is going to fix what the call center or corporate policy broke in the first place.  So can we please stop using this video as the lesson for Social Media?  It’s really incidental to the real story of bad publicity.

Part of my job involves periodically participating in call center conferences.  It’s something that I really enjoy, because I’m naturally curious, and the good conferences are attended by the best and brightest in the industry.  I never fail to come back with new insight and ideas to chew on.  Though, it does tend to annoy the development team on my return.

Something that surprises me is how often at these events we talk about callers as if they’re aliens from another planet.  A bit strong, maybe, but we sometimes assume that callers react differently than we would.

Case in point, when “I” contact a call center, it’s because a) I have an issue, and b) I want to get it solved, hopefully quickly as possible.   And “I” want to talk to the person that can help me.

Everything between me and that person who can help is an obstacle.

At these conference, when my peers are talking about “setting up an IVR so customers can find information themselves” and “callers prefer to use voice recognition IVRs”, I think, “WHO?  Not me.”  And, when I ask the attendees if THEY like that type of IVR treatment (hey, I like to stir things up sometimes), not the vast majority of them either.

Now, I’m not anti-IVR, and not even anti voice response IVR.  Hey, we sell a really good one.   An IVR has a valuable place in most call centers IF used properly.  I’ll have more to say on that in future postings.

But, sometimes in our zeal to apply technology or to reduce costs, we can pretend that it’s what the customer really wants.

Not me.  I just want to talk to someone.  And, I suspect, that’s all you want do.

In today’s infinite choice marketplace, customers can drop you at a moment’s notice, and go to your competitor.  Every company contact is life/death, and can make or break your customer relationship.

Really?

Well, no.  Enter the power of apathy.

We all balance the annoyance of the status quo vs. the aggravation of change.  Change usually carries a personal investment that will make you (OK, me) wait until a tomorrow that may never come, even if there’s a real financial savings.

New credit card provider?  Have to update all my prepaids.  What were they, again?

New TV provider?  New installation, have to blow a workday.  And, geez, isn’t this new channel bundling complicated?

New email service?  The old address is registered EVERYWHERE.

But don’t assume that apathy translates to loyalty.  And don’t assume that an apathetic customer will engage with you any more than the absolute minimum he or she has to.

I would be remiss in my role as a blogger if I didn’t address the role of “social media” in customer care.  This will be a regularly recurring theme, so I might as well start early.

There’s a HUGE amount of hype/activity/fear/noise about social media in the business media.  Message number one is “the power of social media can put your company at risk”.

One of the most referenced examples is the “United Breaks Guitars” video on YouTube.  You can see the video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo .

To date, the video has been viewed over 11 million times, and resulted in an avalanche of bad publicity.  Social media advocates attributed a $180M drop in United’s stock price to this one video.  Though in retrospect, this may have been an exaggeration, there certainly was some bottom line effect.

What isn’t in dispute is that the company wished they had early warning, so they could have corrected it early on, and avoided the whole experience.

Here’s the thing.  THEY DID.   They had all the warning in the world.

Listen to the words of the song.  The songwriter exhausted every avenue that he could think of with the company over a nine month period.  Then, and only then did he take the approach that he did.  ANY ONE of the company’s representatives could have prevented that song appearing on YouTube.  Either no one cared (which I highly doubt) or none of them had the authority to overstep a policy.

There are a number of lessons that I take from this video.  That maybe if someone persists for nine months they will be unhappy and frustrated and might do something extreme.  That maybe a company should keep track of all the interactions so they can see if they’re putting a customer at risk.  That maybe inflexible and unreasonable policies can backfire.

The most important lesson – if you make complaining on social media the only viable option to get satisfaction, don’t be surprised if you encourage unhappy customers to take that route.

How you think your processes work and how they actually work may be two different things.  As part of our call center engagements, we have to “discover” how our customer’s operation really works, through first hand observation.  If we don’t, we’re pretty well guaranteed that our solution, once deployed, will come up short.

And, lest you think that this is a judgment on our customers – far from it.  EVERY company has a gap between process theory and real world application.  We certainly have it here, and I know it.  To a point it’s a good thing – for sometimes the de facto process is better than the designed one.  Let me illustrate…

Far too many years ago, I attended the University of Waterloo.  When the University was first conceived, they had a master plan for every building, for every parking lot, for every tree, for every path.  Well, buildings got built, parking lots got paved.  As far as the landscaping went, that got delayed.  Which meant that buildings were separated by fields.

Students came.  Students walked between buildings, creating their own paths.

These paths in no way resembled what was on the original plan.  They didn’t look like they would be the most efficient paths, but in practice (I can say from personal experience) they were.  Fortunately, someone with authority smartly decided that THOSE were the paths that should be paved.  Wise move.

So, anytime you’re looking at reconstructing your paths, er, processes, check to see if the ones being walked today aren’t already the quickest ones.