Social media is all the rage in customer relationship management (CRM) these days. It even has its own tag: SCRM. Still, it remains a double-edged sword for the business world. Despite its newfound popularity, the flourishing of an army of “experts,” and the plethora of how-to information on the Web, some companies still don’t get that social media is a tool best used gingerly to attract and retain customers -- and not as a hammer to pound home a company message.
Case in point: A realty firm’s debacle
over the mishandling of a customer’s complaint on Twitter.
Amanda Bonnen complained of mold in the apartment she rented from Horizon Group Management in her Twitter feed last May. The tweet read: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”
Instead of addressing the problem from a customer or public relations angle on the popular social media service, the company chose to take a hardnosed stance and sue the customer into silence.
Horizon immediately filed a libel lawsuit against Bonnen on the grounds that Bonnen “maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory Tweet.”
News of the lawsuit spread on Twitter like brushfire. Rather than silencing the complaint, the action fueled its reach to the nether corners of Twitter and then, by extension, to Facebook, blogs, and mainstream news outlets. Certainly that was not the effect Horizon was trying to create, since they said the legal action was “to protect our reputation.”
To make matters worse for the Chicago-based property firm, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen recently dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that the elements of libel were not met.
Specifically, the judge ruled that the tweet was “too vague” to fit the legal requirements of a libel case. In the eyes of the law, the tweet could have been about any number of companies with the name Horizon, since Twitter is international in scope and the tweet did not significantly identify the company in this respect. Secondly, the tweet could be merely opinion; and lastly the plaintiff failed to prove actual harm from the statement.
But make no mistake: The company did come to harm, but more so from its own lawsuit than its disgruntled renter’s tweet.
The point of whether there was mold in that apartment or not was lost in the public’s mind. If anything, the lawsuit dismissal could be construed as proof to the legally uninitiated that there was mold, whether or not such was the case. That is the norm when it comes to public opinion: Perception usurps reality.
Certainly, Horizon has an opportunity to appeal the ruling, but to what end? It could be argued that the damage to the company’s reputation has already escalated far beyond the reach of the original offending tweet and that the company’s reputation is unlikely to be repaired with any legal win. Indeed, a legal win could create the opposite effect, given the current populist bent in the public domain, leaving Horizon looking like a bully.
Horizon isn’t the only company that is likely to suffer from backfiring lawsuits intended to protect a brand. In December, Advances Equities, a brokerage and banking services firm, hammered Yahoo to reveal the identity of a commenter that blasted the firm on a Yahoo chat board.
In the same month, SoAct.net, a social networking Website, filed court actions to force Twitter and stock market message board IHUB to reveal account user info for users who posted that SoAct was a “fraud.” Both firms filed in Cook County just as Horizon did. Apparently, they plan to sue the commenters once their identities are known.
The lesson learned from the Horizon suit -- and likely to be reiterated by similar suits -- is that it is at best treacherous ground to confront a customer who is active in social media, and at worst it is brand suicide.
Consider your responses to disgruntled customers carefully. In the equalizing world of social media, might does not make right, and your own lawsuit can seriously weaken your defense.
— Pam Baker is the author of eight books and a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in CIO.com, NetworkWorld, ComputerWorld, IT World, and other magazines.
I am surprised that this case is still being talked about, though it has been fun to watch companies come to grips with social media.
Early on there were the examples of people who blogged, Tweeted, etc. about companies only to hear back from the companies. Not to sue, but to find out what they could do better. I have a NY Times reporter on my Twitter feed who lost his electricity for several days and Tweeted about it. He received a box of flashlights and batteries in the mail from one company. (Hopefully he returned it, from a journalism ethics perspective.) He did not get a favorable reply from someone else without a NY Times connection who was also in the dark.
Consumers are much more sophisticated when it comes to marketing. They don't want it to be obvious. I don't know whether this or good or bad, I'm kind of leaning towards bad when it comes to the readily accepted ideas of product placement, "gifts" to bloggers, etc. I do think there should be transparancy. But when it comes to relationship marketing, well, service providers have been doing that for years. And social media, when done right, is really just an extension of that. (And when it's done wrong, well, it's like watching an accident. You don't want to look, but you just can't help it!)
You'd think this would be common knowledge by now. Ugh.
Maybe top exec training should include getting them on Facebook and Twitter, just for them to get a feel of how social networking works. They probably think that suing that lady is like suing a journalist over libel. It's just not the same, but that's probably not obvious to these execs.
Absolutely a missed opportunity that stems from possibly a lack of understanding of social media. Most companies still have a great fear of social media and therefore do not understand it is the new PR tool or the market research opportunity.The reality is that not everyone is going to like your products or have a good experience, as things sometimes go wrong. Even if the customer was wrong, it is still better to turn the situation around, take it off line and fix the issue. That one customer turnaround will lead to good comments and invaluable P.R.
It's amazing how many people out there Tweet via their cellphones thinking they are sending a private message to their friends and are clueless that they just blasted the planet.
It’s a shame that a company would choose a hostile attack as their response of choice. There is undoubtedly an interesting history behind this story as there is in any complaint situation. There are three sides to every story; yours, theirs and the truth. The saddest part is that company missed a fantastic opportunity to turn a public complaint into a free ad campaign.
Simply tweeting back to that person to request a factual basis for the claim and the public responding to it would have been a PR coup. The old saying goes any press is good press could be used here if only cooler heads prevailed.
dbergman -- there are several ways to find tweets about any given company. The simplest is Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/ There you can enter a keyword or a company name and instantly receive a list of recent tweets for you to read -- even if you do not follow that person. There are other tools that do the same thing and, of course, a Google search will reveal tweets too.
So, yes, companies that are savvy to social media will be immediately aware of any tweet about them -- good or bad.
How did the company know that you reference them in your tweet? Would they really care if any one person makes a post? Were you able to get the Tweet out to the masses?
Well, the problem with scenarios like the ones you mention(i.e. twitter) is that the world, even now, still does not know how social media like twitter and facebook fit into society. Sure, they are great for sharing photos and what you had four lunch, but where they fit into a productive role is yet to be decided. So, you've got people posting things who have no idea where they are posting.....nor the impact , permanence, and consequence of their post/. Then you have the other side of it who do also not understand it who read a twit and sue or go nuts because they don't like it. As a teacher, we see the same behavior in our 7th grade girls. If you do not know how to use it, or don't know it's place in your business or life, then do not open up any cans of worms by challenging that same media.
"In the equalizing world of social media, might does not make right, and your own lawsuit can seriously weaken your defense."
It says alot about the decision makers of the named businessses - their character is formidable to feeble.
If they were really serious about their business, perhaps they would have engaged these customers to IDENTIFY the source of the issue at hand. Utilize social media to IMPROVE your business. At the least the naysaying would be identified.
I see a market for social media consultants to better educate business decision makers and a very low hanging fruit-market seems to be Cook County..hopefully..
Isn't it interesting how often this is what it comes to? Customers get fed up. Get angry. They TRY to use the systems these companies set up to (allegedly) help the customer, and the system flatly does not.
We could have debate after debate about whether this is a fault of customer service, or a designed outcome. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of customer service systems that regularly do not serve the customer has led to the perception that there is good evidence that these systems are DESIGNED to fail.
A replacement LCD screen can be $200, minimum. And that can be BEFORE labor costs are included. If a customer support call costs $15, that's 13 calls a customer can make and still leave the company with lower costs than if they lived up to their promises to that customer.
Consumerist and other sites make their living BECAUSE, I suspect, that's how companies think, rather than about serving the needs and fostering the loyalty of their customers. Or, at least, too many companies do so.
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