Woolworths : Great social presence; terrible delivery
I am not generally one of those who get up on their soap box and start sprouting negative sentiment until the cows come home. I am also aware that some of my followers and readers of this blog are not fans of “brand trashing” through social channels. But (as there always is) this time I feel that I have been seriously betrayed by a much loved and admired brand in South Africa. Not only that, but there is a major example here – real life – of how brands can damage themselves should they not be adequately prepared.
The story goes like this.
Last week Tuesday I needed to get a R 100 Christmas present for a friend of mine as we were having a get together Christmas party on Saturday evening. I started scouring the internet to look for ideas and the thought struck me to try Woolworths. I had seen their offline ads about their shopping portal and how super simple it was to use. I had also seen the Woolworths SA twitter profile @Woolworths_SA making a lot of noise. So I gave it a shot.
I went online and looked around at the men’s section. I browsed until I was blue in the face and eventually found something that I thought my friend would like. He likes hats; so I found him a hat!
I hit the equivalent of “add to cart”; filled in my delivery address and selected my method of payment. I indicated my delivery time for Saturday morning between 10:00 and 13:00. It was smooth; it was almost nirvana! I proudly sat back thinking, “wow, when online shops like this work, it makes it so much easier – I will be back to do this again!”
I went and spoke to a colleague who was also looking for something and told her to go and order from Woolworths – which she did!
Shattered dreams!
Now the reason why I included the screenshot of the product I was going to buy; and please note that this screenshot was taken on the morning of writing this article, not 4 days prior – when the following transpired.
Friday afternoon at about 16:20; I was sitting in traffic when my cellphone rings with an unknown number. I hesitate before I answer thinking it is going to be someone selling me another cellphone contract; nevertheless I answer.
The gent on the other end of the phone proudly announces that he is calling me from Woolworths EASTGATE (my first suspicion something is about to go wrong). I miss his name as he mumbles it out before plunging in to tell me that the item I ordered from the store is not in stock.He continues to tell me that they cannot source another cap for me as there will be no time to do this before my requested delivery time. My blissful Woolworths dream is about to come crashing down.
After further interrogation; I tell him to cancel my order as if Woolworths cannot supply what I ordered; then I do not wish to proceed with anything further. After a few uhms, he says that he will get the call center to call me and officially cancel my order; after which he promptly puts the phone down (without saying good bye).
Being a proponent on online and social media; I decided to Tweet Woolworths to alert them of my dissatisfaction.
To date I have not heard anything from them in response to this Tweet.
The plot thickens.
I didn’t think terribly much of this until earlier this afternoon. I was speaking to a colleague (the same one who also placed an order last week) and was telling them about my misfortune with my online order. To my shock and horror on Friday afternoon she also received a call and was told that her order could not be fulfilled! Surely this cannot be a coincidence? Two separate orders both getting the same response?
The only difference with her dealings with the call center agent is that she received an email confirming her order cancellation (something I am still waiting for).
I love the quip in brackets about them hoping it was not something that they did! 
What went wrong?
For my money there a few things that have gone wrong here :
- The online brand promise is not being fulfilled by offline promises.
- There seems to be a supply chain issue if the Eastgate store is calling me about an order when my closest store (which I indicated) is Fourways Mall.
- Staff monitoring the Woolworths online social presence are not properly trained in dealing with all their mentions or their monitoring techniques need some revising.
- The stock control for their online store is not sufficiently updated in real time with the in store POS (point of sale). (i do realise the complexities here and understand how difficult this point is to get right).
Planet Fitness : Not Making Friends or Winning Members
My usual disclaimer when starting a controversial post. This article is a real rant about the last few communications that I have received from Planet Fitness. I want to illustrate how business operations can greatly affect your marketing campaign and leave you with little control over the backlash is to follow.
Setting The Scene
Around 2 weeks ago, I received an email from Discovery letting me know what my monthly rates for Planet Fitness would be for 2011. That’s where my first inkling of annoyance started. I am on Discovery as a medical aid primarily because of the fact that Vitality allows me to – for a minimal monthly fee – be a member of the fine fitness institution that is Planet Fitness. There was no talk, when I joined up, about additional monthly fees.
To further my love for Planet Fitness, I then received a further sms, from Planet Fitness themselves this time, letting me know that my bank account would be double debited on the first of December for my membership fees.
(Cue the boiling blood…)
Now a few questions sprang to mind at this point :
- What on Earth is going on with Planet Fitness and Discovery’s relationship!?
- How dare Discovery pass my banking details across to Planet Fitness?!
- Where can I find a new gym?
Luckily I went to gym that afternoon and joined the picketing masses at the front desk demanding to know what on Earth was going on. We were curtly told that, “these messages were not meant for you, delete them and move on.”
Which I did. Ready to put this whole tirade behind me. But then….
The plot thickened…
This morning I received the following sms from Planet Fitness :
“Due to SA power demands, Planet Fitness will reduce our operating hours from 1 Jan 2011. We will nolonger be open 24 hours. Contact your club for details.”
The thing that really irks me is that Planet Fitness must think that I am stupid. Don’t lie to me and pretend that you are closing early to reduce the load on the Eskom power supply within the country. You are closing early because you are not making money between 02:00 and 04:30!
Let’s look at the damage.
From the beginning Discovery and Planet Fitness have been guilty of database mismanagement. They should have segmented their database enough to realise who on their database was a Vitality member and then NOT send the fees messages to them. Both of these messages have left bad tastes in their members mouths. Couple to this the fact that the Planet Fitness level of service delivery has dropped significantly (my opinion) over the last few months and you have a lot of members not loving Planet Fitness.
On another level, with Planet Fitness choosing to cut their operating times, they are losing what I deem as being one of their biggest differentiators. Now their offering does not differ significantly to Virgin Active.
In my opinion, Planet Fitness now have a huge mountain to climb to re-elevate their brand. They would need to start managing their online reputation. Second to that they need to evaluate what it is that they are bringing to their target market that makes it different from their competitors.
Let’s hope they don’t choose a wannabe comedian to be their spokesperson though…
Social Media : Addiction, Disease or Accepted Social norm?
Here comes another disclaimer. I seem to be doing this a lot lately. This article is not meant to be a dig at those who do the things I mention below. I am merely asking, from as neutral a view point as I can attain, why we (yes I said we) do these things? For whose benefit is it and how is it affecting all of us. This article is questioning more than it is laying blame; even though at times it doesn’t seem to be.
Is social media really all that social?
This is a serious question. When did the boundary between social media and real life become so grey and blurred? When did it become the social norm to walk in to a room, whip out the cell phone and “check in”, “tweet” (with geo-location) and “update your status”?
What about all the people that you are with? The friends that you have with you there and then; the ones trying to share the experience with you. Is it not a little anti-social to be continuously on your phone and screaming to the world, “I am here, watch me!”
I know that humans like to share. It is generally within our nature to let other people know who we are and what we are about; but why do we feel the need to do it all the time?
I understand that there are events of such huge magnitude that we cannot help but share it. These events give us social standing and give people a sense of who we really are. It gives our Twitter handle a persona, something that our followers can connect to. But how does a tweet which says, “morning ppl” add any value to my life whatsoever. If I had to Stumble Upon it (pun intended); it doesn’t really give me anything other than the fact that wherever you are, it happened to be morning when you tweeted it.
The difference between business social.
I understand that as a medium “social media” is still very young. There are no real rules governing what makes a good post / tweet / update; but surely a little common sense is required. Asking ourselves, is this tweet / update really going to help anybody with anything whatsoever.
Are we all not just jumping on the social media bandwagon; trying to amass a social status out of the amount of information (no matter how relevant) we push out in to the world under the banner of social media.
I am not for a minute saying that there is no value to be had from social media; nor am I saying that we need to completely segregate business from personal; this is near impossible in any event.
What I am saying is that we need to think for a second before we put something out to our social network as very often our networks are going to be a mixture of family, friends, clients and potential clients.
Do Cell C “Noah” what they are doing?
In a tide of social media activity – both offline and online, Cell C have become the most talked about cellular provider in South Africa.
In a recent post I made on Ponder (an online marketing blog); I went in to great detail about how Cell C and Trevor Noah have bamboozled the general public and led us all to believe that “the tweet” and CEO (the real CEO) response was for real.
Now think of the campaign what you want.
Maybe it is social media genius to play the social media out like an offline campaign. Ticking all the boxes along the way with regards to media placements, creative cues. I personally feel that they are taking all of the “social” out of their campaign by staging all of the communication points along the way.
But here is the real kicker.
What is the one thing that is sticking out more than the fact that Cell C have taken this (apparent) huge stance to correcting their network? Well; its Trevor Noah!
Trevor Noah, apart from his (I’m sure) immense salary from Cell C is getting exposure second-to-none out there. Not only from the adverts that are Cell C sponsored across billboard, online, tv and radio – but Trevor also now has his own TV show. (It might be the lamest thing out – but its a tv show!) He is giving interviews on radio; and they are not introducing him as “Cell C’s Trevor Noah”… No, he is just, “Trevor Noah, the comedian”.
The Cell C campaign may tank beyond belief; but Trevor is not! Cell C might become synonymous with Trevor Noah; but he is certainly not becoming synonymous with Cell C.
I think that the true winner out of this is going to be Trevor and second to that, online marketers who are going to realise some of the pitfalls of social media.
Online Reputation Management – affected by everything offline
Online Reputation Management (ORM) has become one of the biggest talking points of the online marketing industry of late.
The irony about ORM is that it is everything that is done offline that affects your online reputation. What is quite key about this is that people using Online Reputation Management tools and monitoring need to realise that online reputation management by itself is useless. It is great to say that my company has been monitoring the sentiment of over 1 000 web listings and we have a 43% positive sentiment rating…! Whooppee…!! But what does that actually tell you…? Nothing…? Incorrect!
ORM tells you what is wrong.
The real value of ORM comes out of using what information it is telling you and then acting on that. Now before you jump the gun, that does not mean (to quote PR specialist Craig Rodney at the last Heavy Chef event) you need to take a water pistol and quickly squirt out the fire. Stop. Listen. See what you can learn from the information that is being spread and what you can do about it. Sometimes a guy just needs to have a rant to get it out of his system; you don’t have to reply to and fulfill each and every social media post out there about you and your brand.
The real value as I said is to be given the information about what is bugging your clients and have the opportunity to change their perceptions about your service offering.
Online Reputation Management Tricks
The truth is, there really are no tricks to online reputation management; except for the fact that the term ORM itself is a trick. To manage your online reputation you need to take action offline and ensure that you are doing everything that you possibly can to improve your clients experiences with your company and brand.
An example of this is the following story. If you Google “Absa Bank”; what you will get returned in the SERPS is a really long list of people saying that their customer service is completely useless. Today a Absa Bank Platinum Priority Services Consultant named Phumelele Mthetwa completely proved each and every one of those posts wrong. Phulelele called me this morning about an Absa Bank service, he was friendly, polite and engaging in the conversation. She could answer all of my questions and later delivered via email on all of the promises she made me on the phone. I then mailed her back with a few queries to which she promptly responded with a reply mail and then another phone call to make sure I was satisfied. I was totally impressed with her service deliver that she in part inspired this blog post.
After a bit of waffle there; that is how working on what you are putting out there “offline” as a company has influence on your online reputation. I have posted this article about excellent Absa service; which will make its way in to the search results pages and slowly help Absa change the negative attitude towards them online.
If there is one key lesson out of this lengthy post, it is that online reputation management is about listening to what is happening online and then putting management techniques in place for what is affecting it offline!
Online Reputation Management, what’s it worth?
When speaking to any company today about what the online market in general thinks about their product and service; and their answer is along the lines of, “who cares?!” then you are talking to a company that has turned its back on customer service and consumer loyalty.
What is online reputation management?
A companies online worth is stored in the comments and attitudes of those who interact with the brand online. Their perceptions of the product or service are recorded in the comments that they leave in an array of places. Online Reputation Management is the monitoring of, and acting on, of these comments. This tracking is vital for companies today as they can no longer control each and every conversation about them online.
Where and why do people comment?
As the internet develops, more and more people are beginning to use it as a platform where they can research products and services that they are interested in. These same people are also looking at other comments that similar users are leaving about those self same products and services and basing their buying decisions on those comments first, sometimes even before they have gone to your company’s own website.
Users can do this in a huge array of different places. Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Hello Peter! are just some of the many places where they can post their thoughts and comments on your brand.
Why should my company care?
Your company needs to care about what people are saying about your brand. This is a simple fact with many strong reasons backing it up. Simply put :
- Simply ignoring comments online doesn’t mean that those comments don’t exist.
- Seeing what people are saying about your brand allows you insight into possible future product development.
- Contributing to comments allows you to influence the conversation and also show a positive face to the online world.
Luckily for companies there are many free tools that allow you keep tabs on what is being said about you. Some of these tools are :
Google Alerts – a simple alerts program which sends you an email whenever it finds a new mention of your specified keywords.
Yahoo! Pipes – slightly more sophisticated than Google Alerts, but its definitely for the more advanced user as it is more difficult to setup.
How Sociable? – a great tool that gives you a quick snapshot overview of how well (or badly) you are doing in the online social world.
While these are all great tools, they are all very simple in their construction and are not 100% reliable to use as a means of finding out what users online are saying about you at any given time. To clarify, these individual tools are the precursor to Online Reputation Management tools, but they do serve as a nice intriduction for anyone who is beginning to monitor their brand online.
Watch this space as the company that I work for is in the process of developing our own Online Reputation Management tool which will encompass the basics of ORM, but also push the boundaries of where, when and how information is being tracked.
