MackCollier.com

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Case Study: How Fed-Ex Responded to a Customer’s Viral Video…With Its Own Video

It really is the doomsday scenario for a big brand, in this case, Fed-Ex.  One customer has a horrible experience with a delivery.  A computer monitor is ‘delivered’ when the Fed-Ex driver casually tosses the monitor over the customer’s gate.

Even though the customer was at home.

And the front door was wide open.

And the customer filmed the delivery.

And yes, he posted it on YouTube.

The video has been viewed over 8 million times by now, and was seen on numerous TV stations and shows.  Now if this was your company, how would you respond?  Would you respond?

To its credit, Fed-Ex responded 2 days later with its own video.

Here’s what I love about the video and the post on Fed-Ex’s blog:

1 – Fed-Ex admitted the problem and apologized for it immediately in the video.

2 – Fed-Ex detailed what was done to correct this problem.

3 – Fed-Ex detailed what will happen moving forward.

4 – Fed-Ex responded to the customer video with its own video.  Using the same tool as its customer.

 

Now, the original customer video and Fed-Ex’s response has been dissected on many other blogs in the last 3 months.  But I wanted to focus on the comments this post has generated.  A big reason why many companies do NOT want to use social media to make a response such as what Fed-Ex did here is because they are scared to death that it will simply draw attention to the company and make them a lightning-rod for detractors.

So far, Fed-Ex’s apology post has 181 comments, almost 120 comments more than the 2nd most commented-on post.

Here’s what I thought was interesting about the comments (and I read every freaking one to get these stats):

57% of the comments were positive.

25% of the comments were neutral.

But only 18% of the comments on this post were negative.

Does that surprise you?  It shouldn’t.  As often happens when a company responds appropriately in a crisis situation, Fed-Ex galvanized its employees and brand advocates with this post.  Remember that The Red Cross had a similar episode this time last year with its ‘rogue tweet’ about #gettingslizzard, and the organization’s timely and appropriate response rallied its brand advocates and actually sparked a rise in blood donations.

There is a very salient lesson here for companies about using social media: Participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  By creating a video response to the customer video, apologizing, and detailing exactly how the problem would be fixed, Fed-Ex changed the conversation that was currently happening around its brand.  Prior to this video, the conversation around the brand was decidedly negative and dominated by the customer’s video, because Fed-Ex hadn’t responded.

When they did, the conversation changed.  The company’s response was fast and appropriate, and that not only changed the opinion of the company from some observers, but it also served as motivation for customers and employees to come to defense of the brand.

Always remember this:  Social Media backlashes aren’t created by the initial trigger event (such as the customer’s video above), they are created by HOW the company responds.

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What Ragu just taught us about how big brands should use Social Media and connect with influencers

I am loathe to blog about a topic when it seems that everyone in the ‘Social Media Bubble’ has already covered it, but the recent spat between Ragu and Social Media-savvy dads just keeps pulling me back in.

First, above is a list of the tweets that @RaguTweets sent out to ‘influential’ dads on Twitter pointing them toward this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXoFKt-5j6o

As you can see, that video is pretty condescending to dads.  So when you purposely target dads that you deem to be influential and social media savvy with a video that talks down to them, guess what happens?  Thaaaaaaat’s right!  Those dads turn to social media to call your brand out as being clueless idiots.

Did we REALLY not see this coming?

As C.C. said on his blog: “When my first interaction with a brand is an @ spam on Twitter … and when I engage and yet see nothing to welcome me … that is a turn-off. Follow that up with a video that insults me and my friends? Yeah, not exactly the welcoming committee I would have expected.”

What made this situation worse (as it usually does in the case of a ‘social media firestorm’) is that Ragu took a half day or more to respond to the dads they had spammed with the above tweets.  As I keep saying, most social media firestorms aren’t caused by the brand’s/org’s initial action that triggers the discussion, it’s by how the brand/org REACTS (or doesn’t), to that firestorm.  Here’s a couple of examples:

1 – Motrin Moms.  The discussion started I believe on a Saturday on Twitter, and Motrin never responded.  By Sunday, the anger had reached a fever pitch on Twitter because the brand wasn’t addressing the complaints over one of their ads.  So someone figured out who their agency was, and contacted them to ask for a response to the outcry on Twitter about the Motrin ads, to which the agency rep gave the now infamous response of ‘What’s Twitter?’  Motrin’s mistake was that they weren’t monitoring online conversations about their brand, and when you drop a new ad on Friday and go home for the weekend, you run the risk that said ad might generate some discussion that you want to be aware of, over the weekend.

2 – The Red Cross and #gettinslizzard.  The Red Cross did the exact opposite in handling a ‘rogue tweet’ from an employee that was accidentally sent from The Red Cross account instead of the employee’s account where she MEANT to tell her friend that she had the beer they were going to be drinking that night.  So it looked like The Red Cross was tweeting that they were #gettinslizzard.  There was an immediate reaction to this tweet, but to The Red Cross’ credit, they quickly jumped all over this, and within an hour had deleted the tweet, and explained the situation.  This totally changed the reaction to the event, and turned detractors into evangelists, and The Red Cross actually ended up seeing a nice bump in blood donations as a result.

 So in closing, I think there are two key lessons that brands need to take away from this whole episode with Ragu:

1 – If you are going to use social media sites and tools to promote yourself, you have to be prepared to respond to customer feedback via those same sites and tools.  Again, what Ragu did was effectively spam these dads with links to videos that talked down to them.  That’s a recipe for backlash from those same dads that anyone can see coming a mile off.  But when Ragu didn’t respond to criticism via Twitter till the next day, their slow response time became part of the frustration for the dads, and only made a bad situation worse.  As Gini says, you can’t commit to using tools your customers are using to be social, as sales channels only.  Your customers have an expectation that if you are going to use social media, that you will be….social.

2 – Understand that reaching out to influencers is a double-edged sword.  The great thing about influencers is that they have reach and the ability to connect with large networks.  The bad thing about influencers is that they usually have little to no affinity for your brand.  When Ragu targeted influential dads and then spammed them with a condescending message, they were setting themselves up to get slammed.  And then they haven’t helped matters with their response in MediaPost which basically reads as ‘sure, we got some things wrong, but so did the dads as well’.  The very thing that attracted Ragu to reach out to these influencers (large network, they are influential) is the very thing that sparked this brouhaha because of a poorly-conceived strategy and message.

This is also why I think that brands need to invest more time in connecting with their advocates and fans.  Look at what Dell (Disc: I’ve worked with Dell on this project) has done with #DellCAP.  They have a Customer Advisory Panel in place made up of Dell brand advocates.  These are special customers that Dell can bounce ideas off of, and get direction from.  If Ragu had a similar group in place, they could have reached out to them and gotten feedback on this idea.  My guess is Ragu’s advocates would have seen what would happen, and advised the brand to try a different approach.

In closing, I wanted to share an ‘old’ video from Gary Vee recapping how he handled a potential social media firestorm that affected his business.  As you watch this, pay close attention to how Gary explains that he responded to the criticism via the exact same channels and tools where that criticism was occuring.

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Sunday’s #Blogchat topic – How to Respond to Negative Comments

Tonight’s (Sunday) #Blogchat topic will be How to Respond to Negative Comments, and we’ll be joined by TWO special co-hosts!  Helping us learn how to handle negative blog comments will be Bazaarvoice’s Chief Marketing Officer, Erin Nelson plus Bazaarvoice’s Social Media Manager Ian Greenleigh!  Please click the links to follow both of them on Twitter, and click here to follow them on Bazaarvoice’s blog!

As you know when we have co-hosts, we try to have more structure to the topic, and here’s how our discussion will unfold tonight:

1 – 8:00pm Central when #Blogchat starts, discuss what’s the best response to a negative comment.  How should you handle it, what tone to use, what to address, etc.

2 – 8:20pm we’ll discuss WHO should respond to a negative comment.  Should it be the bloggers, or is there circumstances where the blogger should route the complaint to an internal SME, etc?

3 – 8:40pm we’ll close by talking about if there are any situations where a blogging company should NOT address a negative comment?  What if the commenter is a ‘troll’ and purposely attacking the company?

So that’s the structure for our #Blogchat tonight!  And to help you prep for tonight, here’s a link to a post I ran last year where I shared some information that Bazaarvoice has found on the value of negative comments and reviews.  It was one of the most popular posts here last year and has some fascinating revelations!

See everyone at 8pm, Central!

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Social Media Crisis Management: A No-Nonsense Guide

Past Social Media dramas involving The Red Cross, Groupon and Kenneth Cole are good reminders of the importance of having a solid social media crisis management plan in place.  At its very basic level, the proper handling of a social media crisis should consist of two thing:

1 – A quick response

2 – A proper response

Let’s look at both areas:

Responding quickly to a social media crisis

If you look back at many of the social media dramas that have played out for companies over the past couple of years, many of them were exacerbated by a slow response from the company or organization.  The delay in responding meant the people that were upset had more time to voice their displeasure with the company, to other people.  Which raised awareness of the problem, and made it far worse.  The Motrin Moms episode could have likely been defused very quickly, if Motrin and its agency had been proactive in responding to complaints on Twitter about one of its commercials.  But since the crisis occurred on the weekend, when the brand and agency weren’t monitoring Twitter, it was allowed to grow and fester.  By Sunday, most people were complaining more about Motrin’s lack of a response, than they were the commercial itself.

So you can’t respond quickly, unless you know what you are responding to.  That means you need to aggressively monitor your brand’s online mentions.  There’s no excuse for any company that conducts business online, to not monitor online mentions.  Even if you are a small company with a limited budget, there are still free tools you can use to monitor social media.  If you are a mid-sized to larger company, you should seriously consider investing in a premium monitoring suite that will track not only mentions, but trends and sentiment as well.  But the point is to know what is being said online about your company or organization.  Remember, when did Noah build the Ark?  Before the rains came, not after.

So now that you are monitoring online mentions, then you can see what is being said about your brand in (more or less) real-time.  This also means that when a situation arises that needs to be addressed, that you can quickly mobilize and formulate a response.  We’ll talk more about the tone of your response in a second, but another key benefit of monitoring is that it tells you WHERE you need to respond.  If there is a potential crisis developing on Twitter, then that’s where you need to respond.  If it’s on a single message board or forum, then you need to find a way to respond there.  The point is, you need to go to the source of the complaints, and interact with people there.

Responding properly to a social media crisis

So if you have identified a potential issue that you need to address, how should you respond?  Here are 4 common sense tips for handling complaints or negative online feedback:

1 – If someone is leaving negative comments about your company, respond. Even if they are intentionally attacking your company (or ‘trolling’), then invite them to please contact you directly so you can help them with their issues.  And remember, if someone is leaving comments that personally attack your employees or customers, or that contain profanity or inflammatory language, you should delete them.  Now if they are simply saying that they think your company sucks, deleting these type of comments will tend to draw more of the same.  People can see when someone has crossed the line with the tone of their comments, and they won’t fault a blogging company for deleting comments in this case.

2 – Be thankful and polite. Nothing escalates a negative comment into a full-bore flamewar faster than an ‘Oh yeah?!?’ reply from the company.  You have to always remember that the person commenting thinks their complaint is warranted.  And many times, they are right.

3 – If you are in the wrong, then apologize.  And mean it.  The two most magical words in putting out a social media crisis are ‘We’re sorry’.

4 – If commenters are jumping to the wrong conclusion about your company, kindly correct them with the proper information.  Just as you don’t have to accept profanity or attacking comments on your blog, you shouldn’t feel that you have to accept if a blogger or commenter is posting inaccurate information on another site.  But again, remember to correct the misinformation with a respectful tone.

5 – Thank them for their feedback, and encourage them to provide more. Leave your email address so they can contact you off the blog, if they choose.  This communicates to everyone that you WANT engagement and want to communicate with them.

Now for the elephant in the room

Even if you respond quickly and appropriately, you still have to fix the problem.  People are upset for a reason, and you still need to address that reason, and correct the problem.  It might not be a quick fix, but you need to let people know how you are handling the issue, and what steps will be taken to correct the problem.  This is where you can use your social media presences such a blog or Facebook page to communicate to customers and supporters what your plan is for handling the crisis.  But you need to have a plan, you need to communicate that plan (not every detail, obviously), then you need to execute it.

Does this help?  Also, to get another real-world example of social media crisis management, check out this video from @GaryVee on how he handled a social media crisis he found himself in.