Social media as a customer service tool

Image via CrunchBase Finally a lazy Sunday to catch up...well as lazy as a Sunday can be around here. Kids are up before dawn, husband is spending the three day weekend finishing up our landscaping, I'm playing online working on the dining room re-design and then there is the usual cooking, cleaning and never ending "will you play with me" questions that I hate saying no to. :)

I've been pretty MIA from cyber space lately. My sister in law is now a Mrs. and weekends are now no longer dedicated to wedding plans, Alex is officially not in preschool any longer (OMG how did my baby turn into a Kindergartener??) and Liv is walking...plenty to keep me busy. It's funny how attached we become to our information sources. I use Twitter to stay up on news and to interact with friends, and lately also as a venting outlet for crappy customer service issues.

I hate dealing with customer service numbers. It never works out well for me. I end up in a never ending loop of hold music and lack of answers. Boy does that make me mad...enough that I had pretty much given up on calling anymore. Instead I got mad and shot my mouth off on Twitter. I had a rough day, McDonalds screwed up my coffee, Target wouldn't let me enter a prescription online (well they would, just at the end of the process they kicked it out since the person it was for was 9 months old and needed an adult...seriously like my prodigy 9 month old was entering it herself), Lumber Liquidators wouldn't refund half my money for a product I had never picked up for some unknown reason, and Sam's Club had double charged me and messed my order up and I was stuck in an endless loop of them insisting both issues were fixed because they refunded the overcharge. Not my best day and perhaps I can be forgiven for getting a little testy and shouting off on Twitter.

Imagine my surprise when I almostly immediately got direct messages back from Sam's Club, McDonalds and Lumber Liquidators. Direct messages asking me why I was frustrated (kind of hard to explain in 140 characters but I did my best). Direct messages flew back and forth and ended with me giving them my phone number. Within minutes my phone rang and without a minute on hold I was speaking with an awesome customer service rep based here locally. To keep this post out of the novella range suffice it to say that the morning ended with all my refunds being processed (plus some! Rock on Sam's Club for offering a 200% money back guarentee on flowers LOVE THAT), and McDonalds sending me out a coupon for free coffee.

Who knew how powerful venting on Twitter could be and closely some stores watch their brand. Target was the only store to never respond at all and believe me, I'll call 3 out of 4 a win win!