Social Media – Use it wisely!

Many many companies are now on social media, but unfortunately not all businesses are clued in on the best way to utilize the various platforms.

Chobani should be held up, in my mind, as a shining example of all that a business should be on twitter – ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE. I recently had a bad experience, after buying a case of Chobani from Costco. Every single yogurt was mouldy. It must have been a bad batch. These things do happen. I tweeted them immediately expressing my frustration and disappointment. Immediately I was responded to.  Within the week I had a handwritten note from the folks at Chobani apologizing for my negative experience, and a huge handful of coupons for FREE Chobani that more than makes up for the loss of the case. I will totally continue buying Chobani, and will smile every time.

On the other social media hand, I had this experience last night. I have had a rough week, what with one thing and another, and the KoD wanted to spoil me and take me out for a fancy dinner.  We got to the restaurant, and they wanted to seat us 2 feet from the bathroom. There was no way we  wanted to sit there – who would? They refused to reseat us elsewhere, and we ended up leaving. I tweeted what had happened and included the restaurant’s Twitter handle.

This morning I got back a one word tweet from them “Sorry”. SORRY? That’s it? You lost my business last night, you have potentially lost my business for a very long time, you alienated some loyal customers and all you can say is SORRY? No offer for a make up dinner, no offer for a coupon, NOTHING. This is in their public twitter feed. People can see this conversation and see that this restaurant cares NOTHING for customer service. People can search for this restaurant before they go there and this conversation will come up in the search results.

If you are going to have a social media presence use it to promote your company. Better to not be online than to be there and use it to make your business look bad.

Awesomeness

My girlfriend shlepped me out for dinner tonight at Chez Papa Ernie’s. It had been a day of ups and downs and we just needed a change of scenery. What was awesome, other than her delightful company, was seeing my own review taped onto the wall, with certain sections highlighted. First time I have seen anything I have written in a public place. I wanted to autograph it, but I played it cool. See, it wasn’t a totally positive review. Read it for yourselves. But I did snap a pic of it hanging on the wall. I’ll get over myself real soon. I will. Just let me have a moment to kvell.

(Just to note – the service has improved, the waiter was not too friendly and the food was still amazing. We had the smoked meat burger which was delish.)