Sitting in the Virgin lounge is one of the few times I’ve felt that old-school 1950-60s glamour of flying. Relaxing pre-flight with a glass of champagne, snacking on brie, reading a London paper as jets glide in and out of the airstrip behind the giant glass windows of the Sydney airport. Despite my busy travel schedule I’ve racked up nowhere near enough points on the discount VirginBlue to get anywhere near any precious metal status so you can imagine my shock on Friday to find I had been upgraded to gold status.
Me and thousands of other VirginBlue passengers, apparently, as the gold status upgrade email was mistakenly sent to all of Virgin’s rewards members and not just those eligible for gold status. In fact, I think if you had listened really closely on Saturday you may have heard both the collective exclamations and then curses echoing across Australia.
Almost immediately, Twitter lit up with angry Virgin customers who ranged from shoulder shrugging disappointed to lawsuit-wielding mad. Thus far, Virgin has only responded saying there was a processing error and that there’s nothing they can do. But is there a way that Virgin could have taken a social media disaster and turned it into whopping success? Think about it, if their customers had already had their hopes sunk so low, it would taken very little to pull them out of the dumps, plus all the online conversation happening would save them thousands compared to them launching their own campaign.
Social media disasters will happen, things will go wrong, but when mean tweets are hitting your company like daggers it doesn’t mean you should close up shop. Here are some cheap ways to cope with the damage and spin it in a positive light without having to hire an expert PR firm:
• Be transparent about the mistake.
As of Sunday evening, the only explanation Virgin had offered was “Friday the 13th” strikes. In other words, they may have just as well blamed the error on computer trolls or newsletter elves. Even the largest company will, at times, make mistakes and people understand this so when an error is made, fess up and give an honest explanation as quickly as possible. This turns your screw up into an opportunity to demonstrate your transparency and honesty to you customers and will, in the long run and if not made into a habit, build loyalty rather than harming it.
•When people on social media are bashing you, respond
A lot of companies think of Twitter or blogs as only a one-way channel where they can send out their promotions and offers. Social media is as much a place to listen as it is to speak. For most companies, an error won’t be as large-scale as VirginBlue, but find the Twitter users and bloggers with the most influence talking about your error and respond directly to them. Use these people as a way to communicate your apologies and explanations. Many brands have created special customer service twitters, it allows you to respond to complaining tweets without having your screw ups broadcast to the general population interested in updates about your brand.
•Don’t downplay your users feelings
One of the big complaints in the wake of the Virgin incident has been how glib their reply was. They assumed that people would simply shrug off the mistake. Whether the customers affected by your mistake are your biggest clients or your smallest, don’t underestimate the impact your mistake had on them. If a customer is angry, you need to respect their feelings and respond accordingly. Have a phone number, email address, web page and twitter account ready for them to reach you and to respond to their questions.
•Respond accordingly, realize most online chatter will pass
There is a difference between making a mistake, and doing something that ruins the reputation of the core service you provide. In other words, it’s one thing for Virgin to send out an incorrect newsletter, it’s another for them to crash a plane or leave passengers on the airstrip for hours. Before you start on damage control, take this into consideration. In a few weeks, this online chatter will die down and people will continue to enjoy the same VirginBue flights they have always enjoyed with the same gold, silver or non-existent status they had before this all began. If your mistake deeply damages the reputation of the core service you offer, whether it be accounting or pizza making, you need to orchestrate a serious damage-control strategy.
If I owned VirginBlue, I would of allowed the members to keep there mistake gold class but only for 3 months. Call it “we know we screwed up”
I have to agree with Arjen. Dustin Curtis’ redesign of AA.com http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines_redesign.html and the response from a UX designer at AA is an interesting read http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html.
Arjen, fair point - but companies who are serious about social media will have in place a strategy and an action and escalation plan (like we did at the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations) to handle exceptions and crises. This way when something like this happens people aren’t left going “Uh, should we do something? Who do we need to get involved in this?”.
As for Virgin Blue - I wasn’t too fussed about the upgrade accident. They got my hopes up and then dropped them. But I moved on. Until a few days later I experience an error trying to book a flight … the PDF itinerary came through but the website reported an error. So I emailed them about it - and they didn’t reply until I had already flown out.
But not on Virgin, because they cancelled my flight that morning so I had to get a last-minute flight with Qantas for over $100 more. Not only that, before I’d even secured the Qantas flight they would only give me a credit for the cancelled flight and not the return flight even though at that time I had no guarantee that I would even BE in that city to catch the return flight.
So - as you can understand I’m not a massive fan of Virgin right now. But do you think they’ll care? Will they even notice this blog comment? Will they respond or handle it? I highly doubt it. I would like to be surprised though.
Good analysis.
But I don’t think it’s a matter of unwillingness… the real problem might be that most companies can’t “think” that quickly. They need to have planning meetings to discuss strategy and risks, with relevant decisions needing to be cleared a bit up the chain, etc. So they don’t, because indeed by the time it runs through the process, the moment has passed.
Yep it’s fail, but it’s another typical example of companies getting bound by their own business processes - even if they want to be different, they might not be able to.