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Social Media & Transparency – Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Aug 6, 2014 by Claire Faucett 0 Comments

Social media & transparency - being in the right place at the right time blogWe've all experienced it. We call the 1-800 support number only to experience numerous interchanges where we "order up" a solution to our problem via a multitude of automated commands... only to get disconnected or get denied service when we finally reach a real person.

This is what happened to my husband on a Friday evening after business hours when he arrived home to discover the phone and Internet not working. Since the Internet phone was not working, he called with his mobile that has a different area code. He was denied access to a service representative because he was not dialing from a phone within a "designated service area."

Angry and frustrated he took to Twitter, sending a tweet that read, "_____ sucks." Within minutes, a support representative from that provider reached out via a tweet and replied, "I can sense you are frustrated, how can we help?"

Over the next 20 minutes the service representative resolved the issue.

End result: My husband was no longer ranting about said brand on social media. Quite to the contrary, now he is telling his followers what great service he received and how this Twitter support representative turned a bad situation into a great customer experience.

This is an example of using social media as a customer relations tool to show authenticity and transparency in business to solve a problem that could have escalated had the company not invested in a variety of social media platforms.

The company effectively carried out a strategic effort to be transparent in a medium where they have very little control over what is said about their brand. Does your business have an overall business strategy and communication plan when it comes to using social media for business?

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Topics: Transparency

Written by Claire Faucett
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Our approach to running a company was developed to help close one of the biggest gaps in business: the gap between managers and employees. We call our open-book approach The Great Game of Business. What lies at the heart of The Game is a very simple proposition: The best, most efficient, most profitable way to operate a business is to give everybody in the company a voice in saying how the company is run and a stake in the outcome. Let us teach you how to develop a culture of ownership, where employees think, act and feel like owners.