Habitat’s Apology:
Habitat deleted the offending tweets after users expressed their outrage, and replaced them with generic tweets, to cover up its tracks. On 24th June 2009 Habitat put up a apology on Twitter.
The essence of the apology being that Habitat pushed all the blame aside, by saying that; it had not authorised the usage of ‘top trending topics’ hashtags. Habitat even went forth to say that it was shocked when it discovered the hashtag mis-handling and; that this was totally against their communication strategy.
This apology by Habitat lead to speculation as to whether the error was committed at Habitat’s end or did its PR agency mess-up? To clear up the air Habitat did tweet that the hashtags were not uploaded by any agency. So this squarely put the blame on Habitat, and its PR staff.
To add to this, Habitat put all the blame onto an unnamed ‘over enthusiastic internist’ and washed off its hands from the entire incident
(image courtesy Socialmediatoday comments section)
This further lead to a media outcry, where it was debated whether the action of Habitat’s own staff was its own responsibility or not, and if the company lacked enough resources to train its employees.
(image courtesy Socialmediatoday comments section)
All in all Habitat’s apology was very poorly done.
Damage Done:-
All evolving technology has its own flipside, and while the tweets served to damage Habitat’s brand image, the caching qualities of Twitter Search, ensured that the offensive tweets were lived long enough to capture the evidence. Apart from this the damage that had been done was strong and sustainable. Though Habitat deleted the offending tweets from its own account, the various tweets about its wrongful actions and retweets about the same were there to stay.
Today if you check up Twitter search for HabitatUK you won’t find the offending tweets on its account. But the numerous tweets and retweets done by enraged customer are still alive and right there for any user to see.
Furthermore this story was picked up by various media channels, like Social Media Today. Guardian , Sky News etc. This brought further focus to Habitat’s debacle and made its callousness know to the world.
How Habitat could have saved Face:
- First things first, Twitter is a public medium, so a public apology is must. To this front Habitat was good when it issued a public apology via its Twitter account, the quality of the apology was altogether different matter. Blaming interns for the fiasco is in very poor taste.
- Twitter offers individual reach, Habitat should have had individually apologized to those users who were forthcoming about their disappointment in the brand’s management. Such apology would had felt personal and would had gone a long way in building customer trust.
- Everybody loves a good discount. As an act of appeasement Habitat could have offered Twitter users a special discount/ hold special sale for them… something on similar lines. To make its apology more solid and tenable.
- This entire fiasco was based on wrong perception of social media by Habitat. Since it had already erred, it would had been prudent for Habitat to include users in improvising its Twitter account. Asking users for their feedback and what kind of stuff would they like on Habitat’s Twitter page would have been very productive for the company.
- Habitat could have worked with its PR agency to minimize the damage done by this Twitter debacle and work on generating more positive PR. Even today a Google Search about HabitatUK Twitter generates page after page of links describing its Twitter debacle.
Learning’s from this Debacle:
- To err is human, but so also is to accept the mistake, take its responsibility, apologize for it, set it right and ensure it’s never committed again. So whenever faced with a social media mistake, act sure and swift. Apologise and accept your shortcomings. People forgive you if you say you are sorry.
- Use Twitter for what is meant. Twitter is a social media platform; it’s used for interaction and engaging. Corporates should use it for the same. Merely advertising on Twitter is waste of vast potential of this platform.
- Engage, and converse. Advertising is a by-product, keep focus on reaching out and connecting to your users/ customers.
- Have a strong, clear and precise marketing and sales strategy in place. Ensure that you have covered ‘Social media thoroughly in your marketing strategy’.
- Be in control of your marketing message. Habitat in a perfect example were using internal marketing agency, clearly messed up royally. And in case they were using a external agency they surely did a poor job in selecting one; which committed such a gaffe.
- Do not outsource your ‘Social networking’ it’s your chance to connect to the customers, do it personally. Do not treat this platform as advertising medium, it’s much richer. Do not debase it by using it as a mere billboard.
- Take full responsibility of your PR and its action. Explicitly write down your PR contract, and be very clear about what you authorize and what you don’t. Ensure there are enough ‘check-point’ in the system; so that only the best reaches your customer.
- Be transparent and be there. You need to be fully aware of what’s being said and assume full responsibility. You are answerable to your stakeholders, being clueless makes you look fake and worst still; lose the invaluable customer trust.
Bottom-line:
All said and done Habitat’s Twitter debacle offers a very good insight into how companies can go wrong in their Social Media strategy. Learning from other mistakes is the smart way to go.
Related Articles:
No comments:
Post a Comment