As you may know, I’m a big fan of Twitter for a variety of reasons. However, my favorite reason is to create relationships with people and companies with whom you otherwise would not have contact. Take two recent examples of excellent customer service by two different companies with a presence on Twitter.
First, an experience with Granite City Food & Brewery (@gcfb on Twitter). I’ve recently committed to making running a part of my regular routine, and as part of this commitment I’ve become much more conscious about what I eat. To that end, I like to check the nutritional information of restaurants before I eat there, just to get an idea of my options. It turns out Granite City doesn’t post their nutritional information online. I tweeted about this, and it wasn’t too long before I got a direct message from Granite City offering me contact information for the proper person to contact about obtaining the nutritional information. We exchanged a few tweets, and all was good. I’ve always been a fan of Granite City, and their reaching out to me just increased my fandom.
The second was an equally satisfying experience in the end, but started with frustration on my part, and involved Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets on Twitter). You see the line was über long, and wasn’t moving. The staff was cranking out the online orders, and the line grew to some 60+ people standing staring at the staff. I tweeted about my frustration, and it wasn’t long before I had a response from Chipotle asking me to fill out a form on their website. I did this, exchanged a few more tweets, and was satisfied. Fast forward a few days, and I get an email from their marketing department indicating:
I agree with you that there must be a better way to handle the mix of customers and online orders. I apologize for the long wait that you experienced as a result of our poor customer management, I can understand how this would be frustrating. I’ll forward your comments along to our store and local area managers so they can help our teams to better manage these competing needs.
Since we let you down I’d like to try to make it up to you. If you’ll give me your address I’ll send you a Burrito Buck – good for one free burrito, bowl, salad or tacos entree. I’m confident that your next experience will be much more pleasant.
Very cool, and very responsive. Despite an otherwise disappointing experience, Chipotle reached out to me, validated my feelings, and indicated they’d be discussing their handling of future similar situations.
Often times, when I’ve had a poor experience, I just want to know my concern has been heard, and that my concerns will be used to make my next experiences better. Both companies did an excellent job of reaching out to me, and addressing my concerns. Best of all both companies reached out to me without me having to reach out to them directly. Proactive customer service is even better than the sit back and wait model that seems to be so common today.