Tesco Mobile, UK’s largest mobile virtual network operator, has taken a different approach to addressing people’s concerns on Twitter. In previous emarketing classes we discussed social media triage and the best ways to go about answering peoples comments on social media platforms.

One of the most important things we addressed was that when you reply to a disgruntled customer, you must do so in the most respectful way possible because other customers will be able to read your reply. However, this wasn’t the case for Tesco Mobile. Instead of kindly referring people to customer service, Tesco Mobile tweeted back snarky, hilarious remarks to customers that were complaining about their services on Twitter.

For example, @JayFeliipe tweeted “Immediate turnoff if a girl’s mobile network is tesco mobile,” Tesco replied: “Are you really in a position to be turning girls away?”. Instead of being upset with Tesco’s snide comment, bystanders loved it and retweeted it more than 6,000 times! In order to make up for humiliating @JayFeliipe online, Tesco sent him a gift for being so good-natured about getting publicly burned. Here are few more witty Tesco comebacks.

I think it is refreshing for a company to take a risk and challenge the norms of Twitter etiquette. This could have gone horribly wrong but luckily customers responded in a very positive way and now Tesco’s Twitter account is getting more activity than ever before.