My Top Ten Social Media cock ups.

For any brand, it’s a time of crisis and of extreme pressure when things go wrong on social media. A mistimed tweet, or a rogue employee with the wrong passwords can be extremely damaging to the image of a company. However, to the outsider, they can be considered fairly entertaining. In fact, some of the ones I have researched left me feeling embarrassed for the company, so I feel sorry for the manager of these accounts.

Anyway, some of my favourite “face palm” moments on social are below

10) To start us off, good old McDonalds. Back at the start of 2012, McDonalds wanted their customers to share their “real” #mcdstories. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a Big Mac? Well, quite a few people it turns out. The hashtag was inundated with tweets about bad quality food, and just overall horrific experiences. Now, as we all know, people can be quick to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, and despite pulling the promoted hashtag within two hours, it continued to trend across the world. But at least their social media manager identified that it “didn’t go as planned.”

9) It seems that Hurricane Sandy was the perfect opportunity for clothing retailers to push forward their marketing on Twitter. Wait, what? Yep, you heard. Both American Apparel and The Gap decided to plug their companies on Twitter in response to a powerful natural disaster. American Apparel decided very kindly to offer 20% off to anyone in the states affected by the storm. The logic behind that astounds me. Makes me suggest their social media staff attend the meetings of another organisation called AA. Meanwhile, The Gap suggested people make the most of their downtime during the storm to shop on their website. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

8) Remember the horsemeat scandal? The social media team at Tesco probably do. Not only was their Twitter probably plastered with tweets from angry customers, they also neglected to unschedule  a tweet using the phrase “hit the hay.” I can imagine it probably didn’t put off the neigh-sayers.

7) This one isn’t from a brand, but it still made me chuckle. In fact, it happened this week! A 14 year old Dutch girl decided, for some absurd reason, decided to tweet to American Airlines that she was a member of Al-Qaeda, and was planning “something really big.” Far from enjoying the joke, American Airlines responded by telling the tweeter that they were giving her IP address to the FBI. She has since been arrested by Dutch police, despite several tweets protesting her innocence and that it was “her friend.” Ahh, to be young and make terrorist threats again. Those were the days.

 6) Sticking with the airways theme, US Airways “landed” (excuse the pun) themselves in hot water with a rather…interesting reaction to a customer complaint. They initially sent a standard response to the customer. But when the customer continued to express her dissatisfaction with her experience, they, or someone who had access to their account, tweeted a rather unpleasant picture of a woman with a plane that appeared to be a little lost.

5) This is a real facepalmer, and one that the company is still recovering from. On 20^th July 2012, at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie, a shooter opened fire on the audience at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado. As one could expect, #Aurora became a trending topic on Twitter. However, the social media genius’ at CelebBoutique didn’t think to check why it was trending before posting a promotional tweet, saying that it must be caused by their latest dress. I don’t even need to make a witty comment about it.

4) JP Morgan, everyone’s favourite bankers, decided to open themselves up to their loyal and loving customer base with a Twitter Q&A session with its Vice Chairman. In some crazy world they must have thought bankers were the most loved people in the world. But he was soon brought back to Earth was a rather severe bump as he received countless abusive and probing questions about his salary and bonus, before the session even went live. It was hastily cancelled after they realised, 49 years after The Beatles, that money can’t buy you love.

3) Weeeeeee…had better not make light of a plane crash. London Luton airport become the latest in a line of airways social media bloopers that appears to be growing longer than the queues at an airport terminal. In March 2013, they decided it would be a brilliant idea to post a picture of a minor plane crash when a plane skidded off the runway, causing the death of a 6 year old boy. Still, at least they didn’t make a joke out of it. Oh, oops…

2) The runner up is Epicurious, who decided that a human tragedy is the perfect opportunity to sell their breakfast foods. Claiming that their suggestion of whole grain cranberry scones were “in honour” of the victims was naturally met with outrage from the public. After all, who wants whole grain?

1) Mutiny on the ship! Ahh, my favourite social media mess comes from my beloved HMV. Like a modern re-enactment from a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, swashbuckling employees who were set to lose their jobs decided not to bow out from their roles with grace and dignity, but to hijack the company’s Twitter profile and air the grievances. No sooner could a tweet be deleted, than another would appear, causing a rather big sweat.

So that’s it. Ten of my favourite monumental cock ups from the brief history of social media. Ten gloriously cringeworthy tales of dignity disappeared, brands broken, and inappropriate images.

I want to hear about any other social media cock ups you have seen. Let me know in the comments section below!

The standard response.

“We’re sorry to hear this. Please call this number and they will try to help.”

I think we’ve all received one of them on social media at some point, haven’t we? When we’re not happy about a service we have received, it seems like a natural reaction (these days, anyway), to take to Twitter and rant about it.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I make a complaint, I want the person listening to my irritating whinging to care, or at least to PRETEND to care. So when I get the reply “we’re sorry to hear this,” it actually makes me feel even more contemptuous toward that company.

Here’s my problem:

-        I KNOW that this is sent to EVERYONE who makes a complaint. That makes me feel like my complaint has not been digested by the company as a problem. It feels like I am a number, not a valued user of their product or service.

-        They make no effort to try and solve the problem. Sure, they probably have a separate customer services department. But social media officers have, in effect, a customer service role. In that sense, they should at least try to appease me until the issue is processed by the relevant department, right?

It looks like some companies who use social media well still even send it. For example, Aldi tend to do very well with what they do on Twitter. They run regular competitions, use current trends and hashtags to maximise their reach, and when they engage with their followers, they do it well. But, then you see this:

Sigh.

It just grates on me. The great thing about social media is that it is ideal for building relationships with your customers. Is that really what is going to work? Do they really think that people are going to appreciate being sent a copied and pasted response?

How about this then?

THIS is more like it. Even if the sympathy shown is false, at least an effort is made. The person who responded to the complaint is trying to sort it out rather than palm it off on someone else, which is always good to see.

I just think companies have a responsibility to respond to complaints in the right way. At the moment it seems like little effort is made and that the managers of social media simply don’t care. The tweet above is what, personally, I would like to see more of.

Do you have any negative experiences of customer service on social media? Let me know in the comments section below!