No Turn On Red

Imagine it is Friday at 5:00PM and someone just posted, on their blog, about a horrible shopping experience they had at your store. Maybe a cashier was rude or maybe a store was disgusting - but whatever their frustration, they just posted their thoughts online and now it’s gotten linked to from two dozen websites and now people are talking about it across the country.

In this day, do you really want to wait until corporate PR gets into the office at 9:00AM on Monday morning before someone even thinks about reacting to this story? Monday is too late when there’s the potential that someone, reading the blog post, has decided not to shop at your store on Sunday.

Think it is far-fetched? I talked about this earlier in the year, when one consumer posted about their bad experience at a Kohl’s.

Think something like this can’t happen to your business? I can tell you that no matter how well you think you are training your employees, something somewhere is going to happen and someone is going to talk about it online. The next big story could be affecting your retail chain.

Today I read, over at Consumerist, about an unpleasant experience a person had returning items at Victoria’s Secret. Look through the comments and you will see a range of responses - some agree with the poster and complain about Victoria’s Secret customer service, while some stick up for Victoria’s Secret, while others debate the quality of merchandise Victoria’s Secret carries.

You know what I would love to see? Someone from Limited Brands posting a comment in that thread. Maybe they say that they are sorry for the experience, that they will look into it, and get in touch with the original poster privately. They could talk about how they are going to look into the policy and figure out if the sales person was poorly trained, rude, or even correct in what they do. A personal face of the corporation, being honest and engaging conversation, could stop an already bad experience from spiraling out of control. A personal face who could prevent the same situation from happening again.

This is the role of an online Community Manager: someone who represents a brand, online, and engages in honest communication with managers. It’s not hard to go through blogs, social networks, and community websites to find out what is being said about your brand. It’s not that hard to engage and welcome conversation and criticism. It’s not that hard to admit that, hey maybe someone made a mistake at the store level but it was due to poor training and we are going to correct that.

People make mistakes and they want to see big businesses admit that they do, as well. But a retailing remaining silent and ignoring the conversation around them is going to hurt their business and drive away customers.

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