Twitter & Customer Service

There have been many stories of people who take their product or customer service issues to Twitter. On Mothers Day I followed the following stream from Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt) who is the CEO of a half-billion dollar publishing company called Thomas-Nelson Publishers. It’s yet another reminder of not only the power of social media in the consumer space but also never to underestimate who your customer is, Michael Hyatt not only has a powerful network offline given his area of work but he also has almost 80K followers on Twitter who were brought into this customer service failure by 1-800-Flowers

First tweet - 3:33PM 5/10/10

I just found out that @1800flowers failed to deliver my mom her flowers yesterday. So bummed.  about 23 hours ago via HootSuite

This happened to me before with @800Flowers. I figured it was a fluke. Evidently, not. On hold with their customer service. about 23 hours ago via HootSuite

No real help from @800Flowers. “If they don’t arrive by 7:00 p.m. today, call us back for 50% credit to your order.” #FAIL about 23 hours ago via HootSuite

Now @1800Flowers has reached out to me via Twitter. We’ll see if they do better via Twitter than via phone. about 22 hours ago via HootSuite

Twitter comes through where phone customer doesn’t. @1800Flowers is resolving the issue with delivery and a refund. Yea! about 22 hours ago via HootSuite

By the way, @1800Flowers also called my mom and apologized. They promised to deliver tomorrow morning. Both of us were impressed. about 20 hours ago via HootSuite

I just had @1800Flowers DM me to confirm that my mom’s flowers would be delivered today. Great follow-up! about 7 hours ago via HootSuite

Problem Resolved - 7:33AM 5/11/10

At the end of it all 1-800-Flowers went above and beyond by making personal phone calls and thus was able to save face and actually get positive exposure from this, but a customer should never have to take to the public airwaves in order to get the customer service and products that they paid for.