I was recently shopping for a flooring installer to help with a project around the house. I liked the advertising of one company so I went to the website and ended up on their twitter account. Their advertising would have me believe they were the best option around. But their social media told me a completely different story.
Checking their Facebook to see what the people are saying about pricing or if there are any special offers not listed on their website. Hmmm last update on Facebook was 2012. Odd… but okay maybe they diverted efforts from Facebook.
Moving on to their Twitter account, let’s see what their tweets have to say. Oh great! I see a post from two weeks ago. Yes!! Now we are on to something. And I see their top tweet was in response to a customer service complaint. And now I’m thinking, “This company is responsive and open communication – now I’m feeling the love for this company.”
But wait, then I see that there’s another service complaint followed by another and another. Wait a minute! Their entire twitter feed is blown up with nothing but service complaints for as far back as I can see. And the company’s reply is the same answer over and over. They displayed no proactive tweets or efforts to engage their satisfied customers that I can see. SIGH. Major disappointment.
This company just lost my business. Because they’ve mismanaged their social media and in one glance I had a rap sheet of all the complaints I might expect if I hire them. Well, actually my biggest concern was if I hired them and had a complaint, would I be victim to this same unsatisfactory response on twitter? No thanks. And I wonder if their management cares at all what bad messages their social media is sending?