How Responsive is Your Company to Social Media Messaging?

There is a lot of tension created in the corporate suite by social media channels, especially following the very public and humiliating meltdown of HMV on Twitter.  Leaving your tweeting to the discretion of unpaid interns is one thing, but ignoring your followers is equally harmful.

I have often sent direct messages via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with specific requests to various companies with very mixed results.  In some cases, I have used email and the three social media channels just mentioned without getting any response.  This is especially frustrating and puzzling in one case since my request should have been considered as an inbound sales lead of fairly significant proportions.  My satisfaction rating of the company has consequently slid down the scale from being interested to feeling downright negative.

Today, my faith was somewhat restored when I contacted two companies by social media.  One was AHA Media, a social media agency. They get 5 stars for their timely response.  When contacted through Facebook, I received a message back within a few minutes.  Secondly, I was trying to contact Mark Brand, founder of two successful socially conscious companies that are heavily engaged in cause marketing, and the only contact information available was to message through a company Facebook account.  Imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from a company Vice President within a few minutes.  The general manager of the establishment contacted read the message and relayed it up the chain of command immediately.  Not only did I feel very satisfied with the experience, my esteem of the company has risen to a very high level.

Just like the HMV meltdown on Twitter, where some hard lessons were learned, we can all learn how to better communicate with our customers and potential customers using their channel of choice.  How fast will you respond?