Facebook and Twitter are powerful tools. Its so powerful that if you manage it well, it will be able to help you to communicate with your intended crowd, but if you doesn’t it will become a disaster. And I really mean disaster. I’m a fan of several fanpages like Resorts World @ Sentosa, Starhub and many others. I will like to particularly 1 observation on how social media has really changed how things works for Starhub.
It started off really well for Starhub. Whenever there was a query on Twitter or Facebook, they would have someone answering to it. I could even remember when I mentioned on my Twitter that I won tickets to a Starhub event that they congratulated me and when my Starhub Hub-Id was down, how they managed to reset my password even when I did not provide my personal information.
When iPhone 3GS was released the last time, even when there were miscommunications between the online (Twitter and Facebook) team and their Customer Service Officers (CSO), they were well able to quickly do damage control by highlighting some of the wrong information to their CSO. As time pass, there was a constant problem faced by Starhub customers, long waiting time when calling their hotline. It became a constant complain but yet, Starhub was not able to resolve it. Then they introduced Starhub Cares where customers will leave their name and particulars and problems that they encountered. Again, some customers complained that they didn’t get any reply at all.
Things turn for the worst when iPhone 4 was released. They were practically flooded with queries and complains from confused customers. People tried calling their hotline but were not able to get through, people ask questions via Facebook but with no answers and then, more and more people started to complain how the company manages the entire iPhone 4 launch. I still remember 1 or 2 days before the launch of iPhone, there were so many negative posts that Starhub decided to make a decision. The decision was to show ONLY posts made by Starhub as the default view. You will have to select another option to view posts by others. That, I supposed was one way of trying to maintain the positive image for the company, but I thought, it might not be the right move.
While I do appreciate the use of social media to engage customers, but seriously, sometimes, companies should think of the consequences cause if it isn’t use in the right way, it might actually have an adverse impact on the company.
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