Wow!  That’s pretty bad, @lucasdarosa – there are lots of examples of bad social media use these days and any e-mail can easily be shared.  Not good.

There is a saying that “what goes around, comes around” It may be a cliche but in this day of the viral Internet a business can not afford to have people like that working for them.

A business spends a lot of time and energy building a good reputation and this case shows how fast all that can be undone.

Maybe some days, or months given the economy, on the street looking for a new job would teach Paul Christoforo some humility and appreciation for quality customer service.

Study Finds Facebook and Twitter to Become Dominant Customer Service Channels for Majority of US Consumers

The following are its key findings:

• Price of Neglecting Customers: If ignored by companies on social media sites, 45% said they’d feel angry, and 27.1% said they’d stop doing business with the offending company altogether.
• 88% Less Likely To Buy: If confronted with unanswered customer complaints on a company’s social media site, 88.3% of respondents said they’d be either somewhat less likely or far less likely to buy from that brand
• Low Level of Current Consumer Satisfaction with Companies’ Social Media: Nearly a third of respondents, or 32.4%, characterized their overall satisfaction with the way companies use social media sites to communicate with customers as either poor or very poor, while 59.6% expressed guarded optimism for future positive developments in the field and only 8% were thoroughly satisfied.

Customer Service is #1 when it comes to your bottom-line, but it seems that most companies are lagging in this area, especially on their SM accounts.

Has anyone had some customer service “wins” on SM or advice to share?

@donnaduncan I can definitely second that Donna!

I can’t believe that was his response. That’s jaw dropping ….

@kathyweir Seriously? That was good example of why you need to stay level-headed and professional online.

His twitter feed is unreal as well!

I agree with @donnaduncan!

@seancookceo-salyrisstudios we have had some wins. With one client someone posted a complaint on FB and we replied immediately. Part of our contract with them was to have authorization to do this in a manner both parties were happy with. Since we also work with their distributors/external customer service team we refunded her money before we replied and we were able to tell her we had done so in the reply. She was blown away and we had a very happy customer!

With our business we strongly believe SM is about the customer experience, so to have a plan in place allowing the FB manager to solve problems quickly is essential.

I tweet for one of the oldest restaurants in our area using HootSuite. I constantly monitor for issues, get them off the main stream to DM and get the problem resolved, usually with gift cards. I think the guest appreciates a quick acknowledgment that we are looking into the problem and will wait to get a resolution. I also thank for retweets. Twitter appears to be the forum of choice to tweet about the good and the bad.