spreading jam

There always seems to be a celebrity tweeting about a brand they’re unhappy with – two weeks ago it was Rob Brydon with O2, and since then, Perez Hilton has been informing more than 13.5 million people about how T-Mobile and Danger and Microsoft have all failed.

But what’ s a company to do in a situation like this?

1. @reply to any celebrities talking about it (but only if they’re not overly angry)

You can generally tell what overly angry is based on word choice. The two examples above put Perez Hilton on the list of people to ignore. Chances are, if you respond to Perez Hilton and tell him you’re working on it and you’re very sorry, it will add more fuel to the fire.

2. @reply to all the customers with questions.

Be proactive about it; it’s okay to respond even if they haven’t tweeted directly at you. If you don’t know the answer, try to find it, and if you can’t, be honest.

3. Issue statements and updates as often as possible.

You might have nothing to say, but that’s okay. Just assure everyone that you’re still working on it.

4. If you can’t solve the problem right away, start giving away free stuff.

Free merchandise, gift certificates, contract releases, upgrades. Plan it out. If this problem persists longer, how big should the giveaways be? Pay attention to what your customers are saying and if they think it’s enough.

5. Make sure that when the problem is resolved, they are happier than before the problem started.

This might mean a free upgrade or extra services for extended period of time. Make people who ditched the brand think twice about it. Solve a problem well, and your customers will be more loyal to your brand and less likely to jump ship.

T-Mobile is doing rather well in this situation by using all of the above tools so far, but we’ll have to see if in a month’s time Perez Hilton is wishing he had been more patient.