Missed Connections
Marketers have amazing opportunities to wow customers and grab attention through Social Media. They also have remarkable opportunities to drop the ball and lose potential customers. In this post I’d like to share one example of the latter.
This past weekend, I went to have my car’s oil changed at our family’s usual spot down the road. It’s close, but very busy. The service there is good, not great, not poor, and the prices are competitive. I take my cars there not because the service is spectacular (or the coffee), but because it’s close. And easy.
On Saturday, the lines were longer than usual but not long enough to deter me from waiting. I dropped my car keys off and went into the waiting room. It only took a minute for me to realize there was nothing for me to do, and a long time for me to do it. I tweeted my frustration.
Should have brought the #Kindle. I forgot how long the wait can be for an oil change.—
Brian Cheung (@bdcheung) May 14, 2011
Honestly, it was a bit of a rant and I didn’t expect anyone to pay attention, much less respond. Imagine my surprise when @FrederickNissan posted:
@bdcheung Should have come to @fredericknissan Express Service. Get you in and out fassst!—
Frederick Nissan (@Fredericknissan) May 14, 2011
I was kinda sorta pleasantly surprised. But instead of expressing this, I (callously) replied:
@Fredericknissan And u should have looked at the geotag on my tweet. Gas is $4/gal. I'm not driving to Frederick for an oil change.—
Brian Cheung (@bdcheung) May 14, 2011
To give some context, Frederick is about 40 miles (1 hour by car) from my town. That’s a long way to go for an oil change, but had they tweeted something along the lines of “Waiting sucks, but at our place we’ve got books, magazines and a Wii to keep you entertained” I’d seriously consider driving up there for my next oil change. But they didn’t. And they didn’t reply to me when I mentioned the GeoTag. Talk about a missed connection.
And to drive the final nail in the coffin, yesterday @FrederickNissan tweeted this to me:
@bdcheung True that!—
Frederick Nissan (@Fredericknissan) May 16, 2011
Which was a reply to my original tweet about the long wait. Two days later and they skipped over the conversation I tried to start, reverting back to my original tweet. In the end, I felt ignored and, in a way, used.
Would you have done anything differently had you been running @FrederickNissan’s social media? Would you have done anything differently had you been in my shoes? Let me know in the comments.
