Tag Archives: social media

December 30, 2013 · 10:47 am

Most Read Posts Of 2013 – Part 3

Continuing to reblog the posts that got the most readership this past year, we come upon a post from just a month ago.  This one concerned the retailers who fined  a customer over a negative review.  Genius!  In the month since this was written, things have continued to slide downhill for the KlearGear folks, with lawsuits being the least of their worries.  Tens of thousands of negative articles have been written about this mess and it remains a fantastic lesson is what NOT to do in resolving customer complaints.

The holiday shopping season has begun in earnest and so today let’s remind ourselves about how some online businesses deserve the equivalent of a Darwin Award for killing themselves as this big opportunity arises.

Stupid IV

(Photo credit: LauraLewis23)

You might have heard about KlearGear.com, a $47million online retailer of what they call geek toys and goodies.  They deserve the aforementioned Darwin Award for resolving a dispute with a customer in a manner that will, in my opinion, destroy their business.  Let’s see what you think.

A customer ordered something from the company way back in 2008 which didn’t arrive.  The customer then posted a negative review on the web.  Nothing very unusual about this so far, I know.  What happened next is.  Some genius at KlearGear decided it would be a good idea to “fine” the customer $3,500 for disparaging the company, citing a clause in their site’s Terms Of Service that wasn’t even in those terms in 2008.  When the customer didn’t pay, they reported the $3,500 as a bad debt to credit reporting agencies, trashing the customer’s credit rating.  You can read the gory details here.

Unfortunately for the retailer, the customer fought back and looks set to win a $75,000 judgement against the company.  Frankly, that’s the least of the retailer’s worries.  The torrent of negative commentary on social media has prompted the company to hide its Twitter account and to close off other social points of contact because of the overwhelming response.  Of course, by going into hiding the company has pretty much destroyed its own reputation on the web.  My guess is that the rest of the business will follow.

This began with a $20 item.  Instead of accepting that there was a problem – perhaps even one of the customer’s own making (which it wasn’t) – and apologizing, KlearGear escalated the problem.  The lost $20 sale is now a potential $75,000 liability which pales by comparison to the millions of dollars of negative coverage they’re receiving.  As we’ve said before, when you’re doing business the right way, the need to moderate or control customer feedback doesn’t exist.  If your product or service is great, so too will be the general commentary about you on the web and social.  We’ve also talked about how it’s easier and more profitable to sell to repeat customers than to find new ones.  That’s a huge reason why the best retailers go out of their way to minimize (or get rid of!)  bad customer experiences.

This is a textbook case on how not to handle customer service or bad reviews.  It’s about as bad as it gets and reached new depths of business stupidity.  You agree?

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December 6, 2013 · 10:49 am

On Being A Sushi Master

Foodie Friday and I have sushi on the brain.  I’m not sure why since I rarely eat it any more, but I found myself immersed in a dream about it last night and thought it might be a good topic for our Foodie Friday Fun.

Many types of sushi ready to eat.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As you know, sushi refers to the vinegared rice which is its heart and not to the fish or vegetables that accompany the rice. Maybe you have learned to make sushi at home. After all, how hard can it be? Rice and sliced fish seem pretty basic. Therein lies the business thought.

Maybe you’ve seen the wonderful Jiro Dreams Of Sushi.  If you haven’t you can find it on most of the streaming services and you should spend the hour and a half watching a master practice his craft.  While Jiro has been at it for many years (OK, decades), the path to becoming a sushi master in Japan hasn’t changed.  You spend a year washing floors and dishes.  Then it’s a year learning how to slice clams and small fish.  A couple of years doing meals for the staff and making the cooked food.  Happy day – you’re five years in and it’s time to learn to make rice.  After that, it’s rolls for takeout only and maybe by year 7 you can actually speak to a customer.  Finally after a decade, you are a sushi chef.

Of course here in the U.S. one can go take a course and in a few months apply for a job saying you’re a sushi chef.  Which is the business point.  Too many of us opt for the quick route as we develop our skill sets.  The notion of “paying dues” is completely foreign to most younger businesspeople and even to a few of us oldsters.  It’s particularly noticeable in evolving fields such as social media.  Think about how many self-proclaimed social media or marketing “gurus”, which is a Sanskrit term for “master”, are under the age of 30.  Really?  I’m sure they know the tools.  The business?  Maybe not so much.

There is no substitute for the ongoing process of learning.  Some things take time and learning to be a master of any sort is one of them.  Much of what I know came from experience, not from books.  We all need to think of Jiro, who continues to learn and to improve his technique.  It takes a year to learn to make rice.  Maybe we should give our businesses at least the respect Jiro shows his?  What do you think?

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December 5, 2013 · 9:41 am

A Place We Can Call Home

Many of the questions I get asked these days revolve around social media.  You know the usual suspects: Facebook and Twitter.  Sometimes clients want to know about Tumblr or Google+ or Pinterest.  From there the discussions move on to “outliers” such as Vine, Instagram, and others.  We spend a lot of time going over the plusses and minuses as well as how to advance the client’s goals using these platforms.  It’s a valuable exercise but it points out something that I think is given short shrift and which is today’s topic.

The Homestead of Captain Alfred

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every one of the aforementioned proprieties creates next to no content on its own.  Users generate nearly everything.  Unfortunately, everything users – and businesses fall into that category – put out there isn’t presented to the massive user bases these platforms have built.  So, as Facebook said in a New York Times interview:

On any given visit to Facebook, the average user could potentially see about 1,500 items, the company said, from wedding photos posted by a close friend to a mundane notice that an acquaintance is now friends with someone else.  Since no one has time to scroll through that many Facebook posts, items in the feed are ranked to put the most recent and relevant posts near the top.

In fact something like 85% of the people who “like” a page don’t see posts from that page in their news feed on a regular basis.  As a brand, you’re at the mercy of the news feed algorithm which is constantly changing.  So often in the effort to expand our reach to the broadest possible base, we give up control of the distribution in a platform that we don’t control.  We do, however, have something that we can do – and probably are doing – that should, in my opinion, be our tp priority: our own websites.

We own our websites.  They are our home base on the web.  We can control everything on it although as I’ve written before, if you’re permitting comments be judicious in your moderation and be sure you’re behaving in a way that prompts mostly positive user response.  We can be sure that the new visitor’s first encounter works just as well as the long-time fan who checks in every week.  The time and resources to support social are far greater than those required to support home base, and because the number of outlets is expanding, so too are the resources to support them properly.  But even if they were equal to those required for home base and it became an “either/or” choice, I’d advocate quality of encounter along with assured exposure over quantity and less control.

Don’t misunderstand.  I believe strongly that brands (and my clients) need to be in social channels.  Not, however, by letting their web homes get run down while they’re off in cyberspace doing so.  That’s my take – what’s yours?

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