Social Media and Marketing

Geoffery Colon from Advertising Age recently wrote a post on how one company’s use of social media and CRM (customer relationship management) restored the faith of an upset customer, namely, himself. Geoffrey’s Volvo randomly overheated as he was driving to work one day. Upset and frustrated, Geoffrey decided to leave a comment on Volvo’s Facebook page to see if anyone would respond, and whether that response would just be another canned “Thank you, we’ll be looking into the matter”.

To his surprise, within 12 hours, Debbie Lentz from Volvo North America left a voicemail on his machine. The person who managed the Facebook community contacted her and she apparently had tracked down his phone number from his purchase of the car. Debbie had already contacted Geoffrey’s purchasing dealer, reimbursed him for the rental car and gave her direct phone number for future contact in case anything went wrong.

It is really nice to see an extremely large company (Volvo) take it’s customer satisfaction so seriously. The fact that a single post on Facebook led to such quick and decisive action is amazing. What started as a negative situation (faulty car) has turned into a situation where the consumer feels glad that they chose a particular brand. This is the type of action that can turn someone into a brand loyalist or even a brand advocate.

It also highlights the changing environment associated with social media. Customers have so many channels to communicate satisfaction and displeasure now. No longer are they constricted to just calling a 1-800 phone number, or emailing the customer support department. We can now just post something on a Facebook page, or quickly tweet something directly to a company’s twitter and we expect quick responses. The problem now comes from whether or not a company decides take advantage of social media and start to engage and respond to these messages.