In the firing line this week … Supermarkets.

Last week I sent the following perfectly pleasant inquiring tweet to Morrisons twitter account:

Hi @morrisonsnews can you let me know if you give excess perishable food from your stores to e.g. homeless shelters? I ask because I saw …

— Jan Minihane (@JanMinihane) July 13, 2012

Now, I’ll give Morrisons their dues, they do state to call their helpine for customer services issues but didn’t say they didn’t answer all tweets; I could clearly see customers service tweets on their timeline so assumed they were open for business, so to speak.

So far, tumbleweed. No response whatsoever from Morrisons. And as a regular Morrisons customer, how do I feel?
A bit unloved and with the impression that Morrisons don’t care about food waste – oops. (I’ve since learned that due to the possibility of being sued by someone who gets ill from this food they can’t/won’t – not convinced by that, has to be a work around, I’ll leave that for another post!).

My regular blog readers will know I had quite the run in with Tesco at the start of the year after being stuck in their car park for 4 hours when the snow hit.

Again, silence on Twitter and my Facebook post was deleted (!) And as a (at the time, no longer) regular customer, how did I feel? Angry, deflated and with a distinct impression that Tesco really don’t give two hoots once you’ve parted with your hard-earned cash – again, oops.

Twitter is literally littered with mentions of the big Supermarkets, most of which goes unanswered (I at least hope they are monitoring it!), such as:

@tesco shenfield poor service again. Fridges closed ten mins early, one guy on till causing queue as two others stand chatting #notimpressed

— Mark Peter Reed (@theatremark) July 14, 2012

Morrisons don’t have a dedicated customer services Twitter account. Tesco do. I’ve had bad experiences with both.

One supermarket which is impressing me so far (online at least!) is Sainsbury’s – they allow their social media team to respond as they think is appropriate to the tweeter, they aren’t stuck with rigid guidelines as to what they can respond to and how.

The result? A happier, more positive, personal service on their 2 main accounts, @sainsburys and @sainsburysPR.

So, what can we learn from these examples?

1. Be clear - if you offer a customer service offering online or not, be VERY clear about where you do it, what you do, and won’t do, and in what timeframe (e.g. ‘This is the customer service account for Joe Bloggs Ltd, we aim to respond to all tweets within 24 hours’ OR ‘We prefer to talk to you if you have a question about our business, not tweet. Call us on 0845 234 567 between 8am and 8pm 7 days; we’re waiting for your call a week’).

2. Be consistent – if you don’t offer enhanced customer service through social networking sites, then always direct inquiries to the website/helpline and don’t waiver from it, otherwise you’re putting out an inconsistent message about where/how to contact you.

3. Reply – I don’t mind being told you can’t answer my query as long as you actually make that effort to reply – not replying is the easiest way to make we want to escalate my complaint – nip it in the bud by being friendly, polite, helpful and informative. I’m sure there is this old wives tale that the customer is always right …

4. Be sure – do you want customers contacting you through social media? There have been some wonderfully embarrassing examples of big companies getting a hard time on twitter. Why? Mainly because their offline customer service isn’t good enough. Put it online too and you amplify it, not resolve it. Solve any offline issues first before considering diving into online.

And a final thought – the supermarkets wanted to become giants, some might say they want to rule the world – well with great power comes great responsibility (thanks Voltaire for that gem) – staff your online customer service offering adequately and do it well or don’t do it at all, the long line of disgruntled unloved customers is just getting longer, and more vocal.

Your customers are your brand advocates; treat them well and you’ll reap the rewards.

Have you had any negative (or positive) experiences with online customer service from the big supermarkets?

Jan

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Image courtesy of freshnetworks.com

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