Social Media Strategy: Have a strategy or pay the price!!

This story acts a powerful reminder that unless you have a strategy with your social media you stand a very good chance of actually generating more negatives than positives and your online reputation can and will go backwards.

The credit for this Social Media story goes to a friend who we'll call "J" as not to effect their ongoing dispute with Virgin Mobile Australia.

"J" had a problem with their Virgin Mobile bill, they had been overcharged to the tune of $200+ for services they had not used.

As most reasonable customers would do they contacted Virgin Mobile customer services in an attempt to correct the error. After three phone calls and 1 hour and 20 minutes spent on hold “J” was no closer to resolving the issue.

Understandably unhappy with the situation the customer turned to the internet and social media for help.

"J" updated their own Facebook status, wrote on the Virgin Mobile Facebook page and posted their grievances on Twitter. In under 5min "J" had 2 responses with offers of help from Virgin Mobile on both Facebook and Twitter not to mention several comments and tweets from other Virgin Mobile customers who'd had similar issues.

After providing the appropriate details to Virgin Mobile via Twitter "J" hasn't been contacted . So after a rapid response there's still no solution and the probability of another complaint being listed on Twitter or Facebook goes up.

This case raises a few points about social media strategy:

1. What does it say about your brand when you can get a faster response an issue via social media? Yes a rapid response is great or even required in a social media setting but it can make your traditional communication channels look really bad.
2. On their twitter account Virgin Mobile remove any negative Tweets and only show their responses to complaints. This does look okay at first glance (if not slightly confusing) however it does raise the question of how many of these issues are actually being resolved and how quickly?
3. There is such a thing as "too good" if you look at a series of reviews and see nothing but positive ones it looks suspect, we're all human and things do go wrong.
   What this situation highlights is the need to think your Social Media strategy through fully before your dealership posts its first tweet or launches its Facebook page.

When complaints do show up (and they will sooner or later) have a procedure for handling them. Show how you resolved the issue and post it publically. Then people can see that you're willing to help giving them confidence that even if they encounter a problem you can and will help.

Chris Vening
Chief Executive Officer

M	0412 889 505
P	1300 66 11 33
F	1300 66 11 34

www.dealersolutions.com.au