How Social Media Will Forever Change Customer Service

I want to further explore the Real-time Review trend and its effect on the wedding industry and customer service.

Real-time review is by definition, hair trigger. Suppose you are sitting in a restaurant and it seems to be taking a long time for your food to arrive, so you tweet your displeasure.  That tweet is read in real time. What if one of your followers reads it and decides to head to a different restaurant to avoid the slow service?  Later, when your food arrives the waiter explains that the reason for the delay is that he took one look at your steak and knew it was not the way you had ordered it and had Chef recook it. Rather than the bad customer service you thought you were getting, you were really being well taken care of. Hmmm, you hair trigger tweet still cost them a customer. Come to think of it, did you even bother to tweet an update? If not, since twitter is searchable, you may do much more damage than just that one customer.

Here is a great video example from Gary Vaynerchuk

That may be an extreme example but look at it in the light of the highly charged emotions that surround all things wedding. Once upon a time, you had some leeway. Today you don’t.

You have all had customers that you had to calm or manage or cajole at some point in your relationship. You probable ended up making them happy-happy before it was all over. The problem is that in the new reality of real time review you may not get the chance to do that before they have drug your name and reputation through the mud. One miscue and they whip out their cellphone and tell the world; no chance for you to fix it if it even needs fixing.

Time was when bridal salons biggest fear about cellphones was the camera in the dressing room. Suppose now she is in there tweeting away about how she thinks you are mean for not letting her play dress up to her heart’s content? Never mind that the very next dress you bring in is the one and the tears of joy start to flow.

Suppose you are 20 minutes late delivering the cake even though it is still hours before the reception. If your bride is edgy to begin with she could have done a lot of damage to your reputation in those 20 minutes.

Time was that your biggest concern was a post at some point after the wedding if something displeased a client. “After the wedding” means that you have undoubtedly already done the backflips and somersaults needed to make your client happy and to repair, remake, refit, recover, rewhatever to make sure their day was perfect. With realtime review you have lost that cushion.

Here is a little story that a florist friend of mine told me. She had dropped off the personal flowers in the bride’s room and moved into the church to decorate it, then on to the parish hall to decorate the reception. Before she left, she stopped back by the bride’s room to remove the boxes she had used to deliver them. The bride’s mother was upset, claiming that the florist had forgotten the boutonnières. She hadn’t. She pulled back the corner of the tissue paper in the box to reveal two packages of lovely boutonnières the mother hadn’t bothered to look for or ask about. I wonder just what was tweeted in that hour?  Scary, isn’t it?

Now, more than ever before you have one shot and one shot only to make your clients happy. If you customer service and more importantly, your client communication isn’t top notch you may be in for a shock. Oh, and you might want to keep track of what is being said about you online in real time.

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