Friday, July 29, 2016
How Theaters Should Handle a Social Media Crisis
Selling Out: Recently, Southwest Airlines had to cancel almost 2,000 flights because of a massive technology failure, which rendered huge portions of their computer systems inoperable for more than 12 hours, reports Convince & Convert. This, of course, led to some 250,000 angry passengers flooding Southwest’s customer service, social media and operations teams.
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6 comments:
I think with the advancements in technology today, every company should be able to if not forced to apologise about mishaps. We have so many social platforms, there’s no reason to not apologise. Also with the live chats nowadays, a company can (kind of) apologize as if they were talking directly to the people they let down. They can do it as soon as they find out about the inconvenience also. Everyone has a phone/tablet/computer nowadays and there’s no reason for the customer to not get the information, therefore avoiding complaints and saving time. I think it’s an excellent idea for theaters. More often than not, the people coming to your show follow the performance on at least one social media platform, so they’ll know if the show gets cancelled or delayed. Especially on broadway. These shows have so much publicity, and everyone follows them, so the audience would get the information instantaneously.
Social media is really taking over the world and not always in a good way. Its hard now a day to say what should go on the internet. But everyone should apologize just because your a big name company doesn't excuse you. There still real people behind the corporation. Also companies need to keep people aware immediately hiding information only upsets people more. Now a days people can find what ever they want on the internet and hiding information is not a good idea. It also raises the question about Broadway and other smaller theaters. They should approach with a very apologetic attitude if they come of like they don't care people are going to get upset. People want to feel like they have a voice and its being heard. Thats why when the company apologize on social media to some one it makes the person feel like they have been heard
While I can understand the concern regarding issues of legality I find it ridiculous that some companies do not even address their emergencies with their online accounts considering it is the fastest way to reach your consumers nowadays. From a purely business stand-point I don't understand why companies would risk losing customers by not dealing with these problems by posting something online. It costs them nothing, takes about 5 minutes and would potentially help them keep consumers in the long run, and any company that believes they have adapted to this new technological world should be able to take those 5 minutes to deal with this issue in the online world.
With technology getting better by the minute, there is absolutely no excuse for a company to not apology for failures that happen on their part. People and customers expect businesses to care for the people that they are tending to, especially airline service. So I'm very glad to hear about what Southwest Airlines did, and they did it in a very innovative way. Taking their apology to both Twitter and Facebook is very smart. It is a very quick and efficient way to get the word out. And no one likes to wait 45 min with services, so Brooks Thomas and the great idea of doing the Facebook live to reach everyone easily. Every business needs to do the same, because if customers don't see sincerity in your apologies and problems you cause, then you will quickly lose those reliable customers.
It is so nice to hear about a company taking ownership of their mistakes immediately after they occur. So often when companies run into problems, they do not face it immediately. They either wait for the fuel to die down, or they don’t talk about it. I really appreciate Southwest use of Facebook live stream option. The statement made in the article about it being harder to be mad at a person rather than an individual is very true. By using live stream, it showed that there were real people working on the issue and answering customer’s complaints, rather than just a robot. I believe that in the future, this move will make southwest more popular in the eyes of the general public, because they are showing their care of their customers. I hope that other companies begin the do more of the same things in crisis.
With the ability for news to spread at such a quick pace, it's incredibly important for companies to apologies for mistakes as soon as they occur. If they don't, the media can blow up so fast and their entire reputation can be destroyed in a matter of days. People expect genuine responses from company, and expect to be treated like people. When companies think that a robotic response will keep people at bay, it only aggravates more. Social media is definitely the best way to make mass apologies to people; not only do news sites see these posts, but many people follow company accounts and can instantly see a genuine human apology. However, I've never considered the effectivity of a live video response. I guess I think of video as something much less accessible than text, and has a longer lifespan than a live video.
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