12 Step Program for Overcoming Bad Blogger Relations

October 22, 2007

Mark Goren at Transmission Marketing related a story about how little Spirit Airlines cares about its customers. Seems the CEO accidentally replied to all on a customer complaint, which eventually made its way to a blogger:

“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”

Ouch!

So, how does Spirit Airlines recover? It’s time for them to enter Social Media Rehab, and here are the 12 steps they need to follow:

1. Admit you have a problem
2. Apologize for being an a$$
3. Make up for the inconvenience you caused them… and then some
4. Develop a set of values which incorporate both the needs of customers and the business (including employees!)
5. Start tracking online conversations about your brand
6. Designate employees to speak/write for your brand
7. Provide them with training in conversation marketing
8. Engage in said conversations using said values
9. Create corporate blog
10. Enable comments, even the negative ones
11. Develop social networking site for your brand evangelists
12. Enjoy success!

The irony of it all (besides the company name being Spirit) is that it could have gone very differently. A good customer experience would have yielded positive word of mouth (FREE ADVERTISING!) and increased Spirit’s sales.

Technorati Tags: conversation marketing, social media, blogging

Posted in Conversation Marketing, Social Media, Blogging by Nathania Johnson