BedTimes magazine June 2010

Experts say ‘be human,’ not robotic or
bureaucratic in your responses. On Facebook,
use your real name and a thumbnail photo of
yourself—not the company logo—when
responding to an irate posting.
do what you can until you realize they
will not accept any apology. Then you
let it go. Hopefully, you have built up
a community that will rise to your defense
in these situations. That is what
24 | BedTimes | June 2010
great brands do.”
Experts say “be human,” not
robotic or bureaucratic in your responses.
On Facebook, use your real
name and a thumbnail photo of your-
self—not the company logo—when
responding to an irate posting.
“Some people have never learned
how to apologize when things go
wrong and most companies haven’t
either,” Smith says. “Yet the ability to
be vulnerable in public is incredibly
powerful and can gain you the empathy
of tons of people.”
“Responding doesn’t need to be
complex,” Beal says. “I’ve distilled it
down to three words when you’re facing
a crisis: sincerity—offer a sincere
apology, often that is all the person is
looking for; transparency—be open
about how the situation came about;
and consistency—make sure this
is an isolated incident and fix the
problem that led to the crisis.”
“Toyota did a bad job of responding
to its recent crisis,” Beal says.
“They were slow to react (customers
had been complaining about
accelerator problems for months
beforehand) and slow to take responsibility.
Now they’ve lost a lot
of credibility. Jet Blue did a good
job after having stranded all their
passengers. They responded quickly,
they apologized and introduced a
passenger bill of rights. Dell is the
poster child for reputation turnarounds.
They went from really
bad to having a really good reputation
and being very engaged with
customers.”
“Making it easy for people to reach
your company in the first place goes
a long way,” Drysdale says. “Problems
arise that are difficult to fix when
consumers are unable to get ahold of
a real person. Display your contact
information online or create a separate
customer service site.”
“One thing we always tell clients
if an online response is called
for, do not go in and use your
company and your brand names,”
Drysdale says. “It’s correct to give
your name and title and establish
your credibility as an employee
of the company—you want to be
transparent. But I’ve seen people
mention their company name 10
times in a single post. That shoots
the complaint you’re responding
to right up to the top of the search
results for your company.” BT
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