MrGareth’s Missives

I couldn't have invented a better example of how not to engage your customers socially if I tried, and certainly couldn't have invented a stranger scenario for it either.  As always with Social Media - you only really learn hands-on and all the theory in the world will only be useful if you put it into practice.  Being on the receiving end of a brand's customer service efforts taught me no end about how the theory works out in practice.

So - to the "strange scenario".  I logged online monday morning to finish off a blog post I'd been writing - funnily enough on social customer engagement - to find that #muslimrage Jihadi hackers had hacked my website and turned it into a protest site against makers of a video apparently insulting "the prophet".  Now I was told that setting up your own business would involve daily challneges, but this was not your everyday small business challenge.

Naturally I immediately hit my social networks for advice and was quickly told to contact my hosting provider for assistance.  I tried this in the old traditional way, and also in the new social way - both with VERY disapointing outcomes.

First - traditionally on the "award winning" customer service line I waited an hour and 20 minutes before giving up and hanging up.  The hold "music" is almost entirely populated with marketing messages about various aspects of their service.  It is my feeling that when a customer has got problems with one aspect of your service, they are not terribly predisposed to hearing about how fabulous other aspects of your business are.  But call centres isn't really my area of expertise.

So with that channel not only proving fruitless, but also intensely infuriating, I moved to social networks - an area I do have some expertise in.  First I went to Facebook and messaged them there where I was - still at the time of writing some 7 hours later - quite ignored.   

I turned also to Twitter, initially also ignored.  But soon I was engaged and told quite categorically that it wasn't their responsibilty but variously that of Wordpress or the webmaster.  

"I'm sorry we can't help with that, you should restore a backup. We may have one available for you but there's a fee associated."

I was told they *could* restore my site for a back up but that would cost me.  I asked how much, $85 dollars I was told.  A further 5 tweets then proceded to explain just how much it wasn't anything to do with them.

So there are a number of problems here and I will list out what they should have done in a moment.  But more generally what is so bad about this is that the ration of useful tweets versus those endeavouring to protect their brand was 7:2.  Later - having checked the situation with my web designer, who incidentally responded like lightening to my Facebook post - I replied to my hosting provider that I'd like to take them up on their back up offer but would prefer not to sit on hold for another 80 minutes.  No response!  So you see - much effort gone into brand protection but a fairly <shrug> attitude to *actually* helping me.  At the time of writing, still no response - which looks very much like <sulk> in response to some of my critical tweets - a look no corporation can afford.

The lessons I took from this, or maxims I have seen reinforced, are:

1. Take it offline - ironically it is always best to be seen to be responsive socially, but to take problem conversations onto email as soon as possible.  (In this case all the context on the source of the problem should have been conveyed by email, along with helpful advice as to how to fix the problem and how to prevent it happening in the future.)

2. Identify yourself - at no point did I know who I was talking to - brand handles should identify themselves with ^initials.  This is a conversation between people.

3. Never say its not your fault, or aportion blame elsewhere (again, this can be discussed on email and in greater context than 140 characters allows - but to be seen to be finger pointing in social media is horrible!)

4. Don't be seen to be helping socially noisy customers short-cut the call centre holding pattern - however long it is!  Instead seek to help them help themselves by pointing them to specific online support resources pertinent to their problem - thereby providing relief without undermining the process.  Being responsive and opening up an alternative channel for communication is what is key here to alleviate the frustration.  (However, scale your call centre so no one - no one - sits on hold for more than one hour!)

5. Most importantly in this case - help first, self-defence never!  Again, what left the sourest taste in my mouth on this occasion was that the huge effort that went into absolving responsibility massively outweighed any the very minimal effort pointed at actually assisting me, their customer.  

Ultimately, once I'd established what had happened to my website, I needed my hosting provider to restore from the back up and was willing to pay the required $85 to do so.  

However, I did not want to risk 80 minutes on hold waiting to make that request and transaction.  The fact that I got 7 tweets absolving responsibility yet complete radio silence on all channels for several days to my efforts to get a resolution leaves the sourest footnote to this tale of epic #fail.

UPDATE: I would post this on my business blog, but as yet Crazy Domains have failed to respond to any request to get it restored from back as they offered 2 days ago.  They have not responded to 3 emails sent monday requesting this.  They have still not responded to a Tweet requesting this, or a Facebook request - and I'm not going to put myself through another 80 minutes+ holding for their Technical not-support, peppered as it is by obnoxious marketing messages.  I must say though they were very responsive to convert the sale though!  

So far no channel has been an effective way to communicate with them.   

Ultimately, I don't get the ins and outs of who/what is to blame for this but I expect more from my hosting provider in helping to fix the problem - least of all a response!  (But in terms of their claims that they aren't responsible at all, this post on Whirlpool is very interesting...)