Everyone makes mistakes– that’s unavoidable, but how you recover from your mistakes is what makes or breaks your company. The best lesson you can learn from mistakes are ones that you didn’t have to experience for yourself. Go through the list of mistakes made by Fortune 500 companies to make sure your company doesn’t make them as well.
Mistake #1: Unclear Communications
When you send out a company message to your market, be sure to not have any conflicting messages. A large software provider made a huge mistake when they released a new email service on April Fools Day. Most of you are thinking: so, big deal? Well, in previous years this company played a joke every year. One year they launched PigeonRank and said that websites’ rankings were now going to be ranked by pigeons instead of technology. So, when they released this new email service, most people took it as a joke. During this time, their competitors were only offering 10 MB’s of storage when they planned on offering 1 GB. Several days later, people started to catch on that it was an actual new service instead of a joke, but the momentum was already lost.
Mistake #2: Telling the User They’re Wrong
Rule number one is: the customer is always right. Well, this large technology manufacturer put that to shame. When they released a new phone on the market, there was a small glitch with the antenna system. If you held the smart phone in a certain way: touching one of the corners with your fingers, you would kill your reception. The company’s response: don’t hold the phone that way. While the company was right about the glitch not being a big deal, they still had a negative response over all the social media sites about not caring about their customers. Well, if people think you don’t care about them, then how do you expect to stay in business? As a result, they gave away free cases with the purchase of this new phone.
Mistake #3: An Insincere Apology
Nothing is worse than someone saying “I’m sorry” and not meaning it, especially in the business world. The worst kind of apology is one in which the person isn’t admitting their mistake. That is exactly what this large cosmetic company did when they were promoting their product and wanted to hear back from consumers on Facebook. They tried to monitor what people said, so they deleted comments and people got mad at them for doing so. They tried to use Facebook’s policy as an excuse to delete any negative comments about their product instead of leaving it on their wall.
Mistake #4: Not Being Transparent With Mistakes
In 2011, a large technology manufacturer’s system was hacked; exposing more than 93,000 accounts with personal data. That happens, but this company covered it up for a week instead of confronting it head on. Consumers were extremely mad at this company for allowing hackers time with their credit card numbers. Even after the incident, the company passed the torch of blame away from themselves. Consumer’s made their angry feelings of distrust evident on social media sites, making the companies mistake look even worse.
Take these four mistakes into account when running your company on social media sites. Your company should have a two way line of communication with your consumers, and embrace the good and bad.
photo source: van gogh’s scream painting