Career News 24/7: The Cynical Girl: Social Media Saturday: Customer Service

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Cynical Girl: Social Media Saturday: Customer Service

Posted: 03 Sep 2011 03:45 AM PDT

I spend a ton of money on clothes, which is crazy because I am a hobo. I always wear the same thing in my casual life: yoga pants, t-shirts, jeans, and maybe a few striped shirts from JCrew. I just have this thing where I can’t be photographed at a conference wearing the same outfit twice.

I have problems, obviously.

Recently, I saw this dress in the window of Mark Shale in Northbrook, IL. I think it’s Diane Von Furstenberg. Not very punk rock but it caught my eye.

I snapped a picture and showed it to my husband. He said, “That dress is cute.”

What? What?! You have an opinion on a dress?

I’m sold.

So I sent an email to the customer service department at DVF and asked, “How can I buy this dress?”

I got nothing. Crickets.

Then I tweeted.

And I heard nothing.

Now listen, this is not the end of the world. I’m not outraged or offended. This is what HR ladies call a teachable moment. There are multiple ways you can respond to online inquiries and social media conversations.

You can ignore it,
acknowledge it (and you can either affirm or correct misperceptions),
or delete it.

This is good HR advice, by the way. With a few extra nuances, that is exactly how you handle employee complaints.

If your company has a clue, it will purchase a (cheap) social media monitoring program and look for tweets like mine. And if your brand is bigger than a lemonade stand, you should have alerts that help you determine if the comments are worthy of acknowledging.

When you’re a company like DVF? I think you respond to all of your tweets. All of them. (Unless someone says something stupid or racist.)

And even if this isn’t their dress… and I’m not sure it is… you respond. You respond. You respond. You respond. A simple issue like buying a dress is a pretty big deal for some women.

Not me. I’m a hobo, obvs.