I do not typically take my bad customer service experiences to social media.  In fact, I rarely complain at all about these experiences, except to my family.  When I do have a bad experience, I privately decide whether it was bad enough that I will take my business elsewhere – on the business side of that equation, I know that these are the most difficult customers to keep.

Business fact:  no matter how good your company is at customer service, your customers will occasionally have bad experiences, and you will receive complaints.  That’s the way things go when you involve human beings, and their emotions.  No organization is perfect.

My Angry Rant

Last Saturday, I broke my own social media rule.  I was angry, and I fired off a tweet about a bad customer service experience that I had at the Hy-Vee store in Winona.  The message I posted was demure compared to what I was feeling.  Nevertheless, I sent my snarky comment out into cyberspace and curiously waited to see if the organization was monitoring social media.  They were.

So What?

I followed up with Customer Service like I had promised.  They responded promptly with an apology, which was followed immediately by another apology from the store’s manager.

At this point, I was impressed with a few things:  (1) Hy-Vee was monitoring social media, and responded to my tweet; (2) they asked for more information and an opportunity to address my concerns; and, (3) they were prompt, professional, and seemed sincere.  I was satisfied with their response to my less-than-constructive criticism.  It was probably more than I deserved.

Business Reality

Stop for a minute and put on your HR/manager hat.  How would you approach the resolution to a customer service complaint received via social media?  As a HR guy, I understand that these situations can be delicate because they involve people, both customers and employees.  What I expected was a follow up email or telephone call a couple of days later informing me that they had taken an appropriate training/coaching approach to resolving the situation.

HyVee WOW!

Instead, a couple of hours later I had a delivery of flowers to my work office – this was the first time I had ever received a delivery of flowers (kind of awkward, really).  With the flowers came a sincere, in-person apology from an employee of HyVee, along with a hand-written not from the store’s manager.  I was blown away.

The Business Case for Social Media

Sorry, but I need to take this great service recovery story a step further.  Here is the context:  I am far from being a social media influencer (yeah, that might surprise you).  You can look – I have about 1,200 followers on Twitter, and many of them were probably too busy drinking green beer last Saturday to notice my tweet (you know who you are).  My snarky tweet was not about to cause a PR problem for Hy-Vee.  Nevertheless, they responded.

Now, some numbers:  my family spends about $500 each month at our local grocery stores.  Let’s assume that we (meaning my wife) decide to continue shopping for groceries at Hy-Vee for the next 10 years (including the full duration of my son’s teenage eating syndrome).  The service recovery could easily mean $60,000 in future revenue.

Social Media & Service Recovery

While this reads like a great service recovery story, it is really a social media story.  Remember, my typical response in these situations is to privately take my business to another store.  My impulsive tweet provided an organization with an opportunity to address my frustration, which they did brilliantly.  Had Hy-Vee not been engaged in social media, the opportunity and the business would have been gone.  Perhaps the ROI of social media isn’t measuring what more you can get, but what you might keep.  Relationships are always personal.  Hy-Vee understands that.

None of this is intended to justify my juvenile social media complaint.  Just because I generally choose not to take my frustrations to Twitter, many other consumers (including your customers) do so quite regularly.

By the way, my wife has banned me from doing any more grocery shopping.  And, I wouldn’t recommend that other happily married men show up at home with a bouquet of flowers that were not intended for their wives.

What social media success stories do you have related to customer service?

Note:  While I apparently will not be permitted to return to Hy-Vee, other members of my family will continue to shop there.