Wednesday 7 August 2013

"Thank you" - A couple of questions for social media bods

I'm sure that anyone working in social media or community management has a reasonable degree of experience in handling complaints. I'm sure, or at least, I hope, you've also received your fair share of 'thank you' messages if your responses have lead to a prompt and positive resolution, or if someone else in your organisation (customer services, membership support, etc.) have delivered a really good response. 

I had a rather pleasant experience today. I booked some tickets over the phone* with StenaLine for a holiday I'm taking next week (yay!). The person taking the booking, Daniel, was very pleasant and polite. It was all sorted in a matter of minutes. 

After a couple of hours I became worried that my confirmation email hadn't come. I was worried that my email address may have been noted incorrectly (my accent is still reasonably strong, and my phone line was poor), or that there may have been an issue with taking the payment.

Under those circumstances, I did what any other Twitter user might do, I tweeted @StenaLineUK about the time it typically takes for their confirmation emails to arrive. As sod's law dictates, the confirmation email came a few minutes after I tweeted them, so I responded saying it was fine, I'd received the email. 

A few minutes later they tweeted me saying "Excellent! Have a great trip! :)". This didn't solve any problems as such, and some companies may not have tweeted back, but StenaLine did, and it made me happy. It also reminded me of the positive experience I'd had with Daniel, the guy I spoke to on the phone. I felt all warm and fuzzy, the entire process was a positive experience.

None of this is ground-breaking stuff, it's about:
  • Having good customer service
  • A friendly 'voice' online
  • A reasonably quick Twitter response time
StenaLine kept it simple and did it well, and that made me happy. So happy, that I thanked the people managing the StenaLine Twitter account, asked if they could pass my thanks to Daniel's manager, and am now writing a short blog post about it :)

The questions (promised in the title) are:
  1. When you receive 'thank you' messages on work accounts, do you pass them to the relevant people/teams/managers?
  2. When you've had good service from other organisations  (over the phone, via social media, over email, etc), do you request that your thanks be passed on?
You're often among the first to receive complaints or thanks if you're working in social media, and I'm sure we're all aware that there are things to be learnt from the complaints, but I firmly believe that passing on the thanks is very important too. 

Do you spread the love?

*I could have booked it online if I hadn't left it so late, but that was my fault.

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