Social Response Before the Crisis
What Is a Social Media Crisis? Altimeter has a handy definition: A social media crisis is an issue that arises in or is amplified by social media, and results in negative mainstream media coverage, a change in business process, or financial loss. Engagement in social media can be feared for the lack of control companies have over the message. But it also offers the opportunity to get involved and retain a voice - and this is the best form of damage control. It is the consequences which mark a social media issue a crisis: negative conversations about your brand don t have to mean disaster. What most affects your reputation on social media is how you deal with these negative conversations - with the right preparation, your company can ride out any social media storm. Social Media Blunders, Viral Customer Complaints, and Campaign Backlashes are all potential causes of crises when not handled properly. In this Quick Guide, we will: Share case studies from some of the major types of crisis you can face, with recommendations on the best ways to prepare for and deal with these. Illustrate the best way to minimize the risk of emerging crises by mobilizing your customer service team for lightning speed reactions. And finally, explain how Conversocial s Social Alerts can help you avoid potential crisis situations. Page 2
Social Blunders How they Happen: from notorious rogue interns, to employee mistakes or inappropriate responses, social media blunders are an entirely new kind of risk from a social presence - they can be anything from a mild embarrassment to hugely offensive if not handled properly. What should you do? Make amends quickly, and take quick responsibility. Respond with a human tone, but take the issue seriously. Your customers need to understand that humans make mistakes, but that inappropriate messages don t reflect your brand and you re sorry for any offense caused. Kitchen Aid Kitchen Aid recently suffered most executives biggest fear of social media engagement - a mistaken (offensive) tweet sent out by a clumsy employee who thought they were posting through their personal account. But the company CEO stepped in and make a quick decisive response herself, accepting responsibility and apologizing to all affected. Wilcoxson s Ice Cream The backlash to a poorly thought-out response from a Wilcoxson s employee was responded to by the company with an unconvincing apology, and a fear-fuelled reaction of shutting down the Facebook page, leaving no positive way out of one person s mistake. Once a social issue has exploded, there s no alternative but to face it head on. Page 3
Campaign Backlash How they happen: Marketing for social media is like no other. Most brands like the idea of an engaging campaign to get customers talking about their brand - but exactly how that conversation will go can t be predicted. From hashtag hijacks to poorly received messages, social campaign backlashes show that you can t just let a message loose on social networks and forget about it. What should you do? Putting thought into the audience of your campaign to get the message right is of course important, but there s only so much preparation you can do before it goes live. Be on alert for reactions to that campaign, and be prepared to react if it doesn t go as planned. The best way to save face is to be humble, and gauge and respond to customers in a way that s in keeping with their reaction. If they re having fun, you should share their sense of humor. If they re upset, you should demonstrate respect. Waitrose Leading British Retailer, Waitrose, recently launched a Twitter campaign, asking for customers #waitrosereasons for why they shop at the upmarket store. Not quite according to plan, the supermarket received a barrage of responses poking fun at their wealthy customer base. Waitrose accepted that Twitter had control of their campaign, and their humble and human reaction went down well with onlookers. FemFresh Femfresh s Facebook marketing campaign wasn t as well received as hoped by fans, who were disappointed with the hygiene brand s approach. In response, the company Facebook page was suspended, with a questionable description dodging the issue, and not a single let-down fan responded to. How FemFresh could rebuild a more positive social presence in the future is questionable. There s no need to run in face of a campaign backlash. Page 4
Viral Customer Complaint How they happen: Consumers are turning ever more frequently to social media to share negative experiences online. In fact, although often the least covered cause for social crises, Altimeter discovered that this was the biggest cause of crises in the last decade. Recently, these popular complaints, attracting support of huge numbers of other customers, have made their way from social networks into the mainstream media. What should you do? Customer complaints that pick up momentum require the most efficient response of all. This is real crisis prevention, and it s important to show that you re taking listening, and involved, as the audience mounts. Make sure that your customer service team are offering real help to customers who need it, and that you express to all affected fans and followers that their feedback is valued. O2 Leading mobile provider O2 was bombarded on Twitter during a service outage. Their response was not only comprehensive, but socially appropriate, earning the company valuable media coverage that not only saved them from the damage to their reputation the outage may have caused, but made the crisis an overall positive event. O2 responded to every customer affected with a personal message, and brought a level of humor to more abusive tweets that bought them the admiration of the Twitter community, and mainstream media. LA Fitness When a pregnant woman had trouble canceling her membership with LA Fitness, she decided to take the matter publicly. The Twitter community took her side in face of a stubborn company that didn t understand the necessity of addressing customers issues fairly and openly through social media. Their eventual reasoning with their aggrieved customer came far too late, as a clearly reluctant reaction to the crisis which had developed. Page 5
Communication & Customer Service - A New Relationship Social media has blurred the lines between brand and service forever. A potential social crisis isn t really all that different to your customers regular communication with you, apart from scale. It s important to be attentive to what they are saying, with a team ready to respond. All departments that communicate with customers need to be connected to avoid social crises. Bubbling social issues require real, quick responses - and this requires the right tools and enough manpower. Great Customer Service is the key to a Great Customer Experience, and failing to deliver it can put your brand at risk. Social Response Before the Crisis Social Media Managers identify better internal organization as the best way to avoid social media crises. Responding less certainly isn t the answer. Fix Internal Processes - 59% Empower Crowd to Respond to Each Other 44% Streamline with New Technologies 33% Hire More Staff 29% Outsource to Agencies 15% Respond to Fewer Conversations 7% Altimeter, Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally, Page 6
Responding Before the Crisis Have a Plan Lay out scenarios for different potential social crises and develop a plan across Marketing, PR, Corporate Communications and Customer Service for how to respond. Make this plan available to everyone involved in social media communication so that it can be executed quickly in the event of a bubbling social issue. Make the Most of your Team Your Social Customer Service team will be responding to customers when a social issue starts to spread. Helping them to respond confidently to customers in times of stress will allow you to spread the reach of your response much more quickly and effectively. Admit your mistakes If you ve suffered a public faux pas, just own up to it and apologize. Be genuine, and don t place blame elsewhere - accept it on your own. People will move on quicker than you expect, and you ll emerge looking like a company that truly cares about what their audience thinks. Hubspot React Quickly Make sure you re on top of your social channels so that you know at the first instance when the seeds of a social crisis are germinating. It s important to be very fast to avoid a crisis that spreads out of your agents control. 1000 s of comments can develop in a matter of hours. Keep a constant eye on activity. Give Your Customers the True Social Treatment The most fitting corporate response in face of crisis carries over best practices from daily social conversations with your customers. Take each customer message face on and give an individual response to everyone. Be persistent, and be human. Take a top level company stance when necessary that reflects these same qualities. Page 7
How Conversocial Helps - Social Alerts Conversocial s Social Alerts provide yet another way of making sure that priority customer messages are dealt with, fast. Understand the earliest point at which a social issue is brewing and organize your team to respond before the crisis. Forecast the anticipated trend for incoming social messages and receive notifications for any unusual spikes in customer activity. Set custom benchmarks for reactions to Facebook posts and receive alerts for those which attract an exceptionally large number of comments from other customers. Collaborate through Conversocial to organize a quick response to a social issue before it becomes a crisis. If you d like to learn more about mobilizing your customer service team to preempt social crises, or how Conversocial can help you deliver a quick social response, get in touch: Email: sales@conversocial.com Twitter @conversocial Page 8