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Are Negative Tweets Pecking Away at Sears’ Reputation?

Guest post by: Todd Jamieson

Article Overview: In the age of social media many companies have had to adjust their business models rather hastily, and in order to appease to the masses on twitter and satisfy the netizens on Facebook, most corporations have had to put customer service at the forefront of this new model. When one dissatisfied customer can virtually blast a business instantaneously and extensively, the advent of multiple dissatisfied customers can quickly become a veritable PR nightmare. The old adage “any publicity is good publicity” may or may not hold true in the virtual age, something that Sears.com is surely to soon find out.

Are Negative Tweets Pecking Away at Sears’ Reputation?

In the age of social media many companies have had to adjust their business models rather hastily, and in order to appease to the masses on twitter and satisfy the netizens on Facebook, most corporations have had to put customer service at the forefront of this new model. When one dissatisfied customer can virtually blast a business instantaneously and extensively, the advent of multiple dissatisfied customers can quickly become a veritable PR nightmare. The old adage “any publicity is good publicity” may or may not hold true in the virtual age, something that Sears.com is surely to soon find out.

By now most people have heard of the “Ipad2” debacle, where Sears mistakenly advertised and processed orders on a $700 Ipad2 for $70. Sears subsequently cancelled and refunded all orders taken at the incorrect price much to the outrage of customers who had though they got the deal of a lifetime. “I am not worried about getting it back as I did have the money to spend. It is just the principle. I will not shop at sears … not like I ordered 100 just 1.” vented one unhappy consumer.

While it remains unclear how many customers had placed orders, what is clear is that Sears stood to lose a lot of money by honoring the sales.However,the more interesting question that has arisen from all of this is whether or not Sears stands to lose more in terms of customer loyalty than they would have by selling an item for 10% of its retail price. Take for example the case of Zappos back in 2010 – despite the fact it cost 1.6 million dollars to do so, Zappos honored all orders processed during a 6 hour period where items on their 6pm.com site were incorrectly advertised at significantly below cost.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh explained “this was a learning experience for all of us. Even though our terms and conditions state that we do not need to fulfill orders that are placed due to pricing … we felt that the right thing to do for our customers was to eat the loss and fulfill all the orders that had been placed before we discovered the problem.”Zappos has since enjoyed near cult-like status in the field of customer loyalty, while at the same time setting a (potentially) dangerous precedent for businesses who find themselves in a similar situation.

So did Sears miss out on the PR opportunity of a lifetime? Probably. Did they miss out on a chance to brand themselves as a customer service icon among new and existing customers? Definitely. Sears should have looked at a ‘mistake’ as an ‘opportunity’; an opportunity to strengthen the company’s brand and stand behind their customers even if a mistake was made. Sears also failed to see the big picture; instead of thinking about the cost that negative customer perception would have on their brand, they focused solely on the short term loss of profit; and that was probably the biggest debacle of all.

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Article Tags: business models, customer service, dissatisfied customers, publicity, sears, twitter
Referred by: http://www.brymarkpromostore.com



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