June 4, 2012 66 Comments

How Not to Manage a Brand’s Social Presence

NMTW Credit Union

Updated: Tom Hammond from the senior NMTW called me and talked about the situation. Though we probably don’t agree on how the situation was handled, it shows professionalism and commitment that he took the time to reach out. Evidently, it wasn’t a canned response but a “personal” response from one of the VP’s at the credit union.

I’ll admit that this story comes out of some personal frustration. I recently had a situation where my credit union closed my account, after having been a member for over 20 years. The balance on this account had been in negatives for 15 days or something, and that’s evidently a big policy point for them, so they closed it. Mind you, other accounts of mine at other establishments have been in this situation over the years, and essentially, I’ll just put them back to positive, pay whatever fees that incurs, and we all continue working together.

But this specific post is about social media presence management. If you are visually impaired or if the graphic above was a little too small, I’ll recount the story.

I first sent an email to the credit union’s only published email. I asked in the email that it be forwarded to the credit union’s president, not in that “I’m Chris Brogan, that’s why” way, but in the “do you really want to turn away a 20-year member” way. No reply.

I then found the credit union’s account on Facebook, because I’d seen that they were quite active on it, promoting the establishment of new accounts. I posted this:

You lost a 20-year member today. I emailed your info@ email address to forward the reason why to your president. Wishing you better in the future.

Here’s the Meat of It All

It’s what came next that’s the opportunity for community managers and brand managers to learn from. What I got back from that post was this (oh, and over 24 hours later):

NMTW takes pride in its member service and we strive to add value to everyone’s day. We regret that in your situation we were unable to assist you any further at the time of your branch visit. NMTW would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and in doing so will prevent similar events in the future.

Er, um. A form response?

I then got a little pissy, but that’s not the point.

If you are going to address a frustrated customer via a social channel, you might consider doing better than responding with what amounts to a pat reply. There were a few hundred other ways one could have handled it. Here’s a sampling:

  • Take the argument offline by asking to call and talk directly. (Learned this from Frank Eliason back in the day.)
  • Apologize for the experience, and acknowledge the request to ensure the email got forwarded.
  • Reach out via the several ways one could contact me and seek to learn more.

We could easily come up with a few more ways to deal with this in the comments if you want, but hopefully, the point is obvious.

Phoning in your social media presence management isn’t going to be all that helpful to your customer’s experience. If you’re working through a third party agency to have them manage your presence, you might want to “secret shop” how they treat your upset customers.

Thoughts on the presence management part of this story?

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Newer Comments →
  • http://askaaronlee.com Aaron Lee

    Looks like they have been following the script and in this case responded using the wrong script. I had a situation where I posted a wall post and all I got was “thank you for your post, we will look into it, have a great day”

    No respond later.   

  • http://cashwithatrueconscience.com/rbblog Ryan Biddulph

    Hi Chris.

    Provide real, live, genuine help. 

    An auto-responder does not cut it. Because you were loyal, and believed in the brand enough to use their service for 20 years, and if the return loyalty is in the form of an autoresponse, especially in the case of a shut down account, then the business will naturally lose plenty of people.

    Trust is built over time but can be lost in minutes. As noted, if you go third party the cookie cutter approach does not cut it, especially in cases like these.

    Ryan

  • http://propertyagents.co/real-estate-lead-generation-course Muhammad Ayaz

    Hi Chris.

    Managing brand social presence has very crucial and I am managing it mostly to interact the readers on the comments and I had a situations sometime where readers became a little annoyed and I think if you interact with them politely after their comments and the solid reason they’ll have no prob. with that. ;-) 

  • http://jestkultura.pl/ Andrzej Tucholski

    Polish Internet had this big crisis in last few days – one of the big fashion online retailers did not pay the famous blogger for their marketing cooperation. Her e-mails were lost without reply so she approached them on Facebook.

    After short squabble the retailer send the blogger first e-mail from a long time – a threat, that they will ask the tax office to inspect her, because she obviously has to be a financial phony or so. She published that e-mail on Facebook too.
    Well, it was better than television to just sit and watch how the fire spins up and devour the company. Almost all of our social media and marketing blogs were online doing live-cases out of it :)

    The crisis ended the next day – someone else from the retailer company logged on and began cleaning the mess up right from the morning, with genuine apologies and stuff. 

  • http://twitter.com/RobinDickinson Robin Dickinson

    Thank you, Chris. 

    What do you think drives a company to auto-bot-source their key customer interaction outposts? Ignorance? A mentality that figures most customers will stick with them cos it’s too much hassle to change? Laziness?

    I understand your frustration and have felt something similar many times.

    Best to you,

    @robindickinson
    Cheeky toonist and hard-nut business facilitator ;)

  • http://lubetkinsotherblog.blogspot.com PodcastSteve

    Too many companies have been persuaded by advertising people that social media channels are great for pushing out the same one-way messages that are failing to get traction in print and broadcast. They profess surprise when they learn that the tools a “free” but don’t devote the necessary people resources because they think they are just pushing out that one-way message instead of TALKING to real people.

    Then they will fire the social media director because it’s not working. Duh!

  • http://www.m2sys.com/ John Trader

    Sad. For Pete’s sake, if you are going to invest in building a social media presence then man the tower with real people. Otherwise, you are nothing other than a robot and in a day and age where people demand personal service and expect to get timely, responsive and empathetic responses – your reputation can be tarnished it a heartbeat. Doesn’t this (and many other businesses) truly understand the value of a lifetime customer?

  • http://twitter.com/phillyrealty Christopher Somers

    Ouch.  A great example indeed.  Companies can definitely learn “what no to do” from reading this.  Piss poor!

  • Allison

    There’s a larger trend here.  Brands use social media just as they have used traditional communications means (Podcast Steve makes that point below).  And very, very few brands these days seem to put a priority on service.  The argument I hear when I talk about this problem is that globalization means price competition has eliminated margins, and customers simply will not pay a premium to cover the cost of better than half-ass service.  Am I really the only one willing to pay a premium for real, responsive service??

  • http://chrisabraham.com chrisabraham

    The worst thing is that there’s an expectation that Credit Unions give hugs and good honest handshakes with eye contact; however, they also don’t have the sort of savvy and resources to convey this kind of realness out across the Interwebs, which is where they need to do it equally as authentically and completely as they do, possibly, in the bank. Sadly, many think it takes bottomless pockets to effectively engage Social 24/7/365 (social demands that there are no “banker hours,” right?) — but it doesn’t. I don’t believe that most Credit Unions will suffer a flood of conversation, but it cannot also be asleep at the wheel — and, worse yet, Chris, you mention that they got pissy, right? (But you deflected on going into that and I would like to know more about that.) Anyway, my point is that it’s bad enough when an Evil Bank does nasty things but Credit Unions are actively trying to portray themselves as The Bank Next-Door and this sort of Bush League behavior will quickly undermine that. Great post, Chris, thanks for sharing.

  • http://twitter.com/jonburg Jon Burg

    Doing social right costs a lot more than the magic beans solutions most orgs were sold, and dipping one’s toes into social rarely nets the intended outcomes.

    • http://www.devinx.com/ Devinx

      Agreed, a good platform, solid team, costs money. Not to mention the caring level of the employee :D 

  • Christina Lannen

    I moved to the US Virgin Islands  8 years ago (from CA), but kept the stateside bank accounts active.  Every single time I’ve had a question and send off an email I receive a canned response that really doesn’t answer my question.  Very frustrating.

    And it’s frustrating when I contact a business to see if they ship their products here (if it’s not in their shipping policy), but they never answer the email.  If they don’t then I’ll have them ship to the cargo company I use.

  • http://twitter.com/StephanieWinans Stephanie Winans

    There are few things in life more ridiculous than a brand’s auto response on Facebook.

  • http://rickmanelius.com Rick Manelius

    It seems like it’s also a system’s failure. Why would they not email/call you before simply closing the account. That seems like an easy way to lose a lot of customers for what could have been a minor oversight. Sheesh.

  • Frank Eliason

    Chris,
    In my view this is even deeper than social media or the poor response. Social media is simply highlighting the culture this organization has. In the spirit of openness, I do work for Citi, which obviously competes with credit unions. My views in this post are mine personally. I also have family members who run credit unions and I have tremendous respect for their institutions. The lack of response to the email and the form response in social show the culture or lack of Customer focus this particular credit union has. The policy in general, although most likely designed to prevent fee build up, was implemented in the one size fits all style. No contact with the member (credit unions are owned by the members) to discuss options or create a dialogue. This is the challenge companies have today in the way they go about everything and the reason I believe smaller, more nimbler institutions will be successful in the years ahead. Unfortunately, without dramatic change, this cu will not be among them. For those who believe social service is the future, I tend to disagree. People turn to it after frustration through other channels, or in some cases, years of frustration in other channels. When it did reach social, a credit union is typically small enough that they could easily do a name search, call and help. Wouldn’t a response from you saying thank you for calling and resolving be more powerful than that form response? Of course handling it right from the start would have been more ideal, but we do understand mistakes but we can not tolerate companies not acknowledging properly and helping.

    Frank
    Author, @YourService

  • http://josephratliff.com/blog JosephRatliff

    Sigh…

    Yet another example of how some businesses are treating the social media like another email inbox.

    It isn’t another inbox… it’s SOCIAL media :)  That means you have to be all social and stuff … ummm, and being social means you have to chat with people.

  • http://www.singularinsanity.com/ Dorothy @ Singular Insanity

    This is a pet peeve of mine.  So many brands are putting themselves out there on social media, but it becomes nothing more than a shop front for pushing out information about their product.  There is very little focus on engaging the clients and potential clients, let alone solving their problems.  I am often left feeling like a very tiny, unimportant fish in a huge sea of big coporations.

  • Steve Groller

    A great post and a ridiculous case of bad Social Media management.  With current or prospective customers (on Social Networks or otherwise), engagement and communication are a vital part of Social Media’s whole purpose.  

    This CU completely undermined the benefit that Social Media can offer them, and that’s bad for not only their business, but for the members that they purport to serve.      

  • http://twitter.com/C_Pappas Christina Pappas

    Had a similar experience with Comcast when I moved earlier this year. I got no where when calling, emailing their CS teams. I write a post about it and another syndication site picked it up.  Comcast reached out and asked me to email their executive team and then called me repeatedly to spend time learning exactly what happened so they could correct things in the future. It didnt fix my situation but I felt better. Sorry you didnt have a good experience here. I wonder if the President even knows that you sent that email or received that response…I personally doubt it.

  • http://twitter.com/DamireWinn Damire Winn

    This is so true and I hate it when you take the time to make sure you contact the brand and let them know what they did wrong and all you get is a cookie cutter response. Putting a brand on social media networks means that the brand is becoming more personable therefore someone should’ve gotten in touch with you as soon as you posted that and they should have given a personal response tailored to the main issue you were bringing up, not a ‘statement’. 

  • http://mattreport.com Matt Medeiros

    The thing that kills me is local business needs to be the most social and they do it the worst. In fact, it should be even easier for a small business to be much more connected than a big bank for example. 

    Posts like these get me equally frustrated!

  • Eric Randolph

    Couldn’t agree more Chris.  This is analogous to sending a cardboard cutout of yourself to a conference and expecting to get leads!   

  • http://www.ryanhanley.com/ Ryan Hanley

    Reasons why you’re not crazy for believing opportunity still exists in small business Online… Very few “Get it”.

    Thanks Chris… 

  • http://twitter.com/jtpedersen JT Pedersen

    Hello Chris,

    Your story seems to be rather one sided.  It seems everyone responding, myself included, would agree that their public response could have been more well-executed.

    The credit union is clearly has not developed their processes well-enough, to ensure effective issue escalation.  That’s not just a social media failure, it’s a business process failure in conjunction.

    Your approach suggest you’re indignant, they’re unreasonable, and after 15 days they simply closed your account.  I think you’re leaving something out.

    I ran my own account into the negative a few weeks ago; forgot to make a deposit.  I immediately received a text from them notifying me of the situation. They gave me 24 hours to correct the situation penalty free.  Might they also have sent you a letter?  In today’s age, when something goes bump with a financial account, it’s hard to believe they didn’t make some kind of outreach attempt.  How about an automated voice mail?  You did have your email, phone numbers, and related info up to date with your bank, right?

    In today’s age, to have an account overdrawn or otherwise deficient for, “…15 days or something…,” and -not- have action taken is pretty incredible.  You were fortunate they let you go that long before closing it.  I’d have closed a deficient account, or at least locked it, after perhaps 7 days.

    That you let it go 15 days ‘or something’ says you don’t really value your relationship with your credit union.  Otherwise you’d have been on top of the situation.  Why do you expect any better of them?

    Oh, and why would you try to fix a deficient account situation by sending an email to ‘info@anybankDOTcom’ anyway?  The appearance is that you were every bit as deficient in your relationship with them as you suggest they were with you.

    Food for thought,
    JT…

    • http://coryobrien.com/ CoryOBrien

      I agree. While their response was overly-formal, it doesn’t appear to be automatically generated, as it looks like they reviewed the situation, and replied that they were unable to do anything at the time of Chris’ branch visit.

      Instead of accepting that as an outcome, it looks like he tried to use social media as an end-around to their established customer service protocol.Add to that the fact that when you request something be brought to the attention of the CU’s president, it kicks off a string of required legal formalities that they were likely dealing with while replying.

      If we want companies to respect us as customers, we also have to be willing to respect them as companies, and realize that sometimes, the outcome of a situation isn’t going to be what we want. When that happens, we can’t just jump on social media and yell louder in hopes that this will force them to do what we want.

    • http://twitter.com/JudyHelfand JudyHelfand

      I replied to you, but I am awating my comment to be approved as I had a link to a PDF document from NMTW’s website. Thanks for your input, it is valuable and balanced.

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      Of course it’s one sided. No one has replied from the credit union except for the robot. The website lists one email. There are phone numbers, if I’d like to wait on hold. I wouldn’t. 

      I don’t doubt that I’m to blame for tripping their policies. But is 15 days in the red worth 20 years of membership service? That’s the question at hand. Should I be in negatives? No. Do I expect to pay fees, etc? Yep. Is it worth canceling a 20 year account? Evidently, so. 

      My argument isn’t with that part of the story. That’s just the event that brought us here. the STORY is in how the social team responded. Who gives a shit about the root cause, because clearly the responders didn’t. They just responded. 

      • http://twitter.com/JudyHelfand JudyHelfand

        Chris,
        Glad to see the update you posted this evening. Knowing that Mr. Hammond reached out to you is impressive. The problem with written responses, such as the one you received from the VP, is that tone is in the ears of the beholder. And as Cory OBrien mentioned below: “when you request something be brought to the attention of the CU’s president, it kicks off a string of required legal formalities that they were likely dealing with while replying.” In this case, they are governed by The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), so when they respond they need to be able to defend their response, in case the consumer files a formal complaint with the NCUA.
        Anyway hopefully all things will move forward in a positive direction. My best to you. Wishing you a safe trip to #BWENY/ Judy

  • http://owengreaves.com/ owengreaves

    There are many lessons to be learned here, but the one screaming at me, DON’T AUTOMATE! Especially support issues, automation sounds good from a percieved cost savings, but the real cost of losing a customer is much highier than paying someone to respond in person / real-time.

    Automation in Social Networks and for Support in tradition formats has proven to fail more often than not. Hell, name one good voice mail system!

    I have yet to see or hear of a positive experience with automation, especially in a support department of any kind.

    Good day!

  • David Quimby

    The reply I would have wanted if I was a customer or the CEO:

    “Hello Chris,

    We are sorry that you have had a negative experience with us and we are happy that you have brought this to our attention. In a way this is what we are here for, we are here to meet your banking needs and eliminate as many banking problems as we can. By letting us know of one, we can fix it for you and for other members, This will then help us better serve our members. We will be contacting you at 1:30pm today to discuss this with you further. Look forward to serving you soon.

    Your banking MacGyver’s”

    Fix people’s problems, don’t make your customers work hard to help you fix it, make fixing it easy on them. You are good great at helping people see the value in that.   Now maybe going to a different bank is the solution but engage them directly, actually talk to them.  Do for one customer what you wish you could do for all of them.

  • http://twitter.com/mitchjackson Mitch Jackson

    Putting aside the issue of whether or not your account should have been closed, the question is whether or not the vendor properly addressed the situation? It did not. It lost a customer for life. It lost you’re desire to recommend others to it. It lost all the related intangibles associated with the above.

    All of this could have been easily handled an old fashion device many people have completely forgotten how to use. It’s called the telephone. Imagine if the branch manger had picked up the phone and called to “touch base” and see how you were doing. To bring their concern to your attention in a polite and professional fashion. That 90 second call (or as long as the two of you wanted to chat) could have resulted in another 20-30 years of business.

  • http://www.themakegoodchoicesproject.org/ Michael Hawkins

    Sad.

    There are some folks at the credit union that need to brush up on their customer service skills.

    Your experience is totally unacceptable.

    Perhaps their online communication pipeline should be of the ‘incoming only’ version and any outgoing messages should be by phone or, at worst, a personalized email message.

    With all the training, books, websites and conferences on customer service, it makes me shake my head in disgust when I read stories like yours.

    Common-sense ain’t so common any more.

  • http://chacal-la-chaise.tumblr.com/ chacal la chaise

    I would add that auto-response emails that claim,”Allow 5-10 days for us to get back to you as we just rolled out a new app version and are receiving a lot of email” is not the way to present your stellar just-gone-gold app, or your company. What made matters worse in this case was that the company didn’t get back to me in 5-10 days. Thankfully, I did receive a refund from the 3rd party app store from where the upgrade was purchased. However, I seriously doubt I could have received a refund within hours from the software company had I purchased the software upgrade from them.  

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  • http://twitter.com/peter_osborne Peter Osborne

    Chris,
    It is an awful response and hopefully will be repaid with accelerated negative traffic.  

    It’s an interesting problem — when something negative hits your Twitter or Facebook stream and you don’t have an immediate response, is it better to (1) try to research quickly and get an answer up to avoid getting slammed by other readers or (2) put up something that basically says we understand your concern, are researching it to get a handle on both sides, and will respond as quickly as possible?

     I understand the 1:1 issue, but what about the 1:Many component of this?

    The other problem in all this is avoiding corporatespeak and coming across as authentic.  You reacted as you did because the response didn’t feel like it was coming from a real, live person.  It’s a constant challenge for corporate America to sound like it’s human and empathetic in the face of criticism.

  • http://faleafine.com NEENZ

    This is an example of applying traditional responses via social media. Social media is to engage and pull in, the response you received? Repels. 

  • http://www.absolutionmediation.ca Jason Dykstra

    A formed response is never the way to go.  There are about one hundred different ways they could have handled it and they missed the boat.  They missed the opportunity to take your negative passion that you had towards them and turn your negative passion into you being a brand ambassador for them.  
    If they responded decently, you would have shrugged it off and stayed a loyal customer until the next screw up.  
    If they responded well, this post would have been singing their praises and they could have had a lot of exposure.  Unfortunately, not many community managers are trained in conflict management….but I’m working to change that :) 

  • http://www.wordpresssites.net/wordpress/ BradleyDalton.com

    Goes totally against the whole spirit of social media as well in my opinion. A bit like Neil Patel removing comments from his blog if you don’t agree with him even if you add value for other readers. 

  • http://www.webpartnergroup.com/website-design Web Design Houston

    I totally agree with you. A form response would definitely piss anyone to some degree. Not a plus point when you want to build relationships via social media. The best for me would be to call and talk directly. It means they really care about clients.

  • http://raulcolon.net/ Raul Colon

    Funny how you still feel it should have been handled differently and the person at the organization does not think it should be handled differently. 

    A huge disconnect from what the customer deserves to what they are willing to offer! 

  • iEllie

    With the private message option for pages I think handling issues through Facebook is much easier. You can make that personal connection and get a better handle on customers who are not pleased. I think acknowledging publicly that you would like to discuss this further in a private message to keep personal information from being released is a great way to get the ball rolling in a positive direction. It make it so that you can go beyond just posting a general number or email which they most likely already have and gives the user an opportunity to voice their issues without it being all over the main page. 

  • http://twitter.com/FinancialBrand The Financial Brand

    You dumped them — hard and cold — and left them no room to respond or recover. You issued a demand, not a request, and did so with attitude in a public forum. You didn’t even say please. So you fire them while barking orders on the way out the door, and yet you expect them to respond like they care? You already announced the relationship is over. You left them no outs. They probably looked at your account and said, “Do we really care if we lose some bitchy customer who constantly drops his account balance into negative territory? No, we do not.”

    You could have easily titled this post, “How to Not Handle Yourself When Seeking Social Media Support.” Or, “What Happens to Brands When Chris Brogan Doesn’t Get His Way? Public Shaming!”

    Had I seen your Facebook post, I would have ignored it. When a customer/member has reached the point where they are closing their account, there is no winning. Better to focus the organization’s time and energy on those customers still seeking service/new accounts. Business is triage. Why make any further investment in a patient who’s already declared themselves dead?

    • Caring for the Customer

      If you think that there is no winning when a customer is at the point of closing an account then you might want to change careers. As someone who has worked in the customer service industry there is always an opportunity to try. Yes, there are some instances where you cannot save the account but many times it comes down to getting to the root of the problem with the customer and looking for a solution or middle ground. In my previous work my job was to save accounts and I did most of the time. If you don’t see the value in keeping the customers you work for then you might as well close your doors. 

      No one likes when people post publicly online about their problems with your company and yes it is tacky but it happens ALL THE TIME! A cookie cutter response is usually not the best option. 

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      I didn’t dump them. They closed my account. 

      • http://twitter.com/FinancialBrand The Financial Brand

        You announced that they “lost a 20-year member.” What are they supposed to think? That you have any interest in continuing the relationship? Either way, your approach wasn’t conducive to the result you sought. You’re doing a lot of finger wagging, but conveniently ignoring your role and responsibilities.

        Banks and credit unions aren’t allowed to charge for overdrafts unless you sign up for the service. Because of the Frank-Dodd Act and Regulation E, you should have received a notice about a year or two ago asking you if you wanted to opt-in to overdraft protection. You obviously did not have overdraft protection on your account, so you either ignored the opt-in messages or declined the service.

        Your account went negative. The credit union undoubtedly sent you some sort of notice, but you elected to leave it negative… for 15 days. If you could leave this particular account negative for 15 days, then I’m guessing it isn’t your primary checking account (a fact that surely wasn’t lost on the credit union managers evaluating your situation).

        You then chose to poop in a public forum maintained by the credit union, and were disappointed with the reply you received. If you wanted to send a letter to the CEO, you could have left a different type of note on their Facebook page: “Hi, I’m a 20-year member. Can you please help me? I’d like to send a letter to the CEO. Thanks.”

        You made a number of decisions that helped lead to the situation you are now complaining about. But that’s really what this is about isn’t it: it’s about you expressing your feelings and frustrations. It really never was about finding a positive outcome.

        Some customers deserve to be fired. And yes, that may even include Chris Brogan.

  • Tkmycall

    What is a “balance in the negatives?”  If I ran a financial services institution I probably would want many customers/members with one.  15 days seems more than generous to allow one to address it.

    This situation probably requires a trip to the office.  Fighting it out on FB seems like a bad plan from the start.

    • http://chrisbrogan.com/ Chris Brogan

      I was standing in their lobby and they didn’t offer to rectify it. That seems reasonably in person. 

  • http://wpthemesdaily.com/ Robert

    Why don’t they just send you an email addressing your issue and let you have some days to fix it? It’s basic response in finance.

  • Debbi

    Unfortunately I see this as the type of ‘talk’ that some (bad) corporations think they need to use to be seen as professional. To me it’s non-speak. It manages to say nothing while actually saying something. I guess my point is that big corps need to understand that people can be personal and professional at the same time.

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  • Melonie Dodaro

    While automated responses can make the lives of people behind customer service management a lot easier.  It pays a lot to get personal most of the time.

    • http://daniellehatfield.com/ Danielle Hatfield

       Great point. 

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/ODECKBAMBYIH62WTJBTLL7HCNY Leslie

    Few things. If you really wanted to get their attention, why didn’t you research the executive’s name and send it directly? Seems you took the easy way out and then called foul.

    I have a personal experience where I did contacted the CEO of the online retailer that kept sending the wrong $7 item to me. They not only jumped through hoops but fell over themselves to make sure that the people below them were involved and ended up keeping me as a customer. Granted you think that an email sent to a company gets read and handled that goes to “occupant?” I never expect an INFO AT email to be responded to with any diligence. That’s the fault of the company and thousands of companies world wide and even YOU the consumer – how much to you care to read the “resident at” or “occupant” mail you get?

    My #1 rule is mind your own business but I have to comment on the story you posted – I had high regard for you as someone who was a good person who could help build business grow as you claim to be a good business person yourself. But, Chris, I would not knowingly do business with someone who regularly has negative bank accounts and treats them as if it’s no big deal. Granted things happen out of your control but there are safeguards to keep your credit and standing with the banking institution in check. However, your post makes it sound like it is a common occurrence and not something you try to avoid, you just pay the fees. Red flag. Guess others, like myself,  have higher standards and am more creative in how they solve issues with people they do business with and how they conduct their business.

    • http://www.devinx.com/ Devinx

      Comeon I don’t agree with contacting the CEO for everything. Why do we have processes in place in every company. If I have a problem with my G-35 I don’t call the CEO of Infinity…I will go to the garage where I bought it. That is to say that the CEO is there to stirr business in the right direction.. I agree that there may be flaws in the process of escalating issues BUT the CEO does not need to know about all the tiny mice-nuts problems that every client has. It is up to the Service Managers and level 1 and 2 people – aka front liners – to raise the finger and say “hey houston, we have a problem” …and message get’s routed to the C-level so they have a committee and start drawing a plan, hire consultants, PR firms, Marketing agencies…Chris :D … and so on. 

  • http://twitter.com/creativegroth Serenia Groth

    I had a slightly similar incident with my bank {OnPoint Community Credit Union} a few months back. Felling a little snarky, I tweeted that they really let me down and that I was very frustrated with them. Within 17 minutes, I was asked to PM them with the details and within the hour my branch manager was on the phone with me to see what we could do to fix the situation.

    My point being, they didn’t “ignore it” as The Financial Brand suggested. They listened to my complaint and made me feel like a valued customer not just another account number. 

    Had I received a percieved canned response like Chris, I probably would have changed banks over the issue. Now, I use this as an example in my classes and to clients on how to deal with a negative comment.

    As for the negative balance… It happens. Whether it’s waiting for outstanding receivables to come in, a mistake in bookkeeping or just overspending, it happens to the best of us. And 20 years with a bank should count for something, if not, maybe you should switch to OnPoint ;)

    • http://twitter.com/FinancialBrand The Financial Brand

      You made it clear that they had the opportunity to recover. You weren’t stomping your feet on your way out the door.

  • http://adyar.bestinchennai.com/Schools Fanaceoushannah

    According to me u can contact concerned person and talk directly.

  • http://www.devinx.com/ Devinx

    That was not an automated response. That is just an Agency or PR that made up 10 ready to use canned responses to post to Facebook. That is not Customer Service. See, that is the disconnect…Social Media is still portrayed as “marketing” and “image protection” when in fact it should be just pure Customer Service.

    The way I see it, is that the person behind that desk..prior to pressing Submit message…should have had a way to search a message from a Chris Brogan inside their CRM (if CU reads this we can help :D – shameless plug) – and then plan how to respond to Chris. Heck, getting a complaint across Social Media is NO different than getting the damn thing over a phone call in their call center – duh. So why put on the white gloves?

    Thoughts?

  • http://www.profiletree.com/ ProfileTree

    We cannot avoid the fact that some people would use these social media platforms to express their feelings.  I think issues like this should be entertained  confidential. I definitely be mad too if I get a response like that. Considering the fact that he’s been in the company for almost 20years, he should get at least an acknowledgement or something about his matters.

  • http://josephratliff.com/blog JosephRatliff

    I’m sorry, but in response to the “update” from Tom Hammond:

    That wasn’t a canned response?  The response didn’t even address Chris’ email at all, it instead refers to “an event.”  In short, the response was not even close to specific enough to be considered anything but canned IMO.

    A customer wants to know that you’re going to handle their specific request, not lump it in with all the other “events” you’ll make sure don’t happen again.  Customers who are upset want individualized attention (especially via social media). ;)

  • http://daniellehatfield.com/ Danielle Hatfield

    Some brands approach customer service (both online and off) as if they are hiding behind an imaginary fortress. The canned responses can come off as if they are fending off their own angry ‘townspeople’ with pitchforks and torches.

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