I have previously written about the beginnings of an addiction to Twitter, my fascination with a social media virtual meetup, and the application of social media engagement to assist entrepreneurial success.  At Quicken Loans, we utilize twitter and other social media venues as a part of our marketing strategies and client service.  We have quite a few stories regaling our abilities to help clients through our process successfully.  I think that it is amazing that companies are out there listening and willing to take action when needed.

I recently had a series of events transpire that started off as a simple complaint and turned into a fabulous outcome.  It is this one story that I will reveal to you in some detail so that we can see the power of social customer service on a person to person level.

About a month ago, I headed out of the house to enjoy my day.  On my list of things to do were:

• Get a good cup of coffee
• Get the oil changed in my car
• Walk around the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

To obtain my coffee, I decided to head to a Biggby Coffee that is right around the corner from my house.  I like their coffee and I like to support Michigan businesses when I have the choice.  As I was waiting in line, I opened my wallet to get out some cash and was enthralled by the fact that I had a fully stamped Biggby Coffee card which now entitles me to a free drink.  I presented the card to the barista and asked for a large coffee.  She looked at the card and proceeded to tell me that Biggby had changed over to electronic cards and that there was nothing that she could do to help me use the card.  I was taken aback and continued pushing the matter with increasing levels of frustration that I am sure was made evident by my voice and actions.  The barista told me that the switch happened in January which made me even angrier because I had certainly been in there since that point in time getting my card stamped on each visit.  With no resolution in sight, I gave up the quest for coffee and headed off to the oil change and art fair.

While at the art fair, I came across Espresso Royale and realized that I needed to get my caffeine fix before my body decided to enter withdrawal and throw a headache into high gear.  Still steamed about my previous experience, I told their barista the story.  I purchased a small coffee and the gentleman handed me a large cup as a simple token.  This made my day better, but I still felt a little betrayed.

The more and more that I thought about it, I remembered that the CEO of Biggby has an account on Twitter.  I always enjoyed reading his little posts and wondered if the world of social client service had spread beyond Quicken Loans.  I decided to engage in a dialogue with BiggbyBob:

FROM ME: @BiggbyBob I got denied at biggby today. Went in with a fully stamped paper card and they couldn’t help me ’cause they switched to electronic 1:29 PM Jul 18th

FROM ME: @BiggbyBob - Told espresso royale what happened – payed for a small and they gave me a large… small effort – long time reward. 1:32 PM Jul 18th

Then… we wait:

FROM BIGGBYBOB: @stuartmdavis Hey Stuart , I can help you with your paper card. Sorry about your visit. Denied shouldn’t B in our language @T_C_B 7:38 AM Jul 19th

BiggyBob has gone down the right path.  He has now looped in T_C_B who is the VP of Operations at Biggby Coffee.

FROM T_C_B: @stuartmdavis drop me an email with what happend at [email removed] and we will get you taken care of for sure! SORRY! 7:10 PM Jul 19th

From this point on, Biggby Coffee did everything right to keep me as a customer.  I sent the email, T_C_B responded back, we came to an appropriate resolution and all was well with the caffeinated world.

Now, this post isn’t meant to encourage the masses to solve your difficult situations over Twitter.  Neither is it meant to convince you to go out and simply FIND a problem to solve in this matter.  This was a personal experiment and I was pleased by the results.  There are indeed other companies out there in the social media sphere that are using this “stuff” for both fun and business. Coffee is a simple thing and I could have simply coughed up the money to get a cup of joe the first time around. Client relationships, however, are not always simple. We all need to listen and have a high sense of awareness. Somewhere out there is a client that simply wants to be heard.  Sometimes a resolution is had simply by acknowledging a client and offering to listen to them, not simply hear them, but listen to them. I know that my friends still ask me what this Twitter thing is all about. “Relationships” is one key answer to that question.

So… are you listening?  Truly listening?

For a while now, I’ve been mulling over how I would start off this post in a manner that would bring you, my two and a half readers, deeper and deeper into this post. Let’s try a different approach:

• What do the N.Y. Jets, a steel pail, a burgundy wristband, and wine have in common?
• Would you eat a cigar?
  Would you lick a stone soaked in salt water?
  Would you eat grass with a little grapefruit juice?
• Any marketer’s dilemma right now is to figure out how to get facebook, twitter, and any other of the myriad of social sites to act as part their strategy.

The answer to all of these, with some matter of grammatical correction to make the response match the question, is Gary Vaynerchuk! I came across Gary via twitter and have simply been healthily fanatic about watching his videos at Wine Library TV and on his blog. Everywhere that you come across Gary on this world wide web of ours, you will notice that he continuously invites you to interact with his life via any manner of sites: linkedin, facebook, twitter, pownce, myspace, and many others.

What impresses me about Gary is not the fact that he is pimping his name all over the place. It’s smart, but it’s not why he is a success. Gary Vaynerchuk is real! He completely loves life and shows it outwardly. He is an asset based thinker, not deficit based (though there is the whole Jets thing but I can let that slide). You can see what I mean in this video from one of Gary’s recent posts really says a TON about this man:

But to really get a taste of what Gary is like, you have to spend some time watching the videos over at Wine Library TV. I like wine and enjoy trying to analyze it. Gary makes the entire experience less pretentious. It is simply visceral the way that he approaches wine. It’s obviously a part of his life, and since he obviously love life, he certainly lets you know how much he loves wine – even when the wine sucks.

So what you need to do is check out some of the links that I just threw at you. Enjoy them for the content and educational matter. Then enjoy them for their life-changing and directional matter. Look into the motivation behind them. Remember, numbers and money follow, they do not lead. So ask yourself what is leading Gary. Once you figure that out and act upon that in your own life, you will probably find yourself smiling a little bit more

Apparently Love’s checks their customer responses.  More than that, it seems that they actually take action on them.  Now they didn’t tell me they did anything, but while explaining my customer response form fiasco to a friend, I found out that they updated the .pdf version of their in-store flier.

Fantastic!  Thanks!

Now let me show you what I wanted to show you.  It’s a relatively moot point now, but I thought it was interesting none the less.  Here’s the section of the advert that I was focusing on that has a different bluetooth headset being advertised than being modeled:

To make sure we can do a decent comparison, I’ve flipped the advertised model around and placed it closer to the model:

It’s a little grainy, but you can definitely tell that the model is wearing more of a boom version and that the colors are in slightly different places. 

So that’s all I was trying to say when I landed in mediocrity mayhem.  Good for Love’s in their speed to recover.  Bad on them for never sending me an email that things were fixed.  And still… check your artwork – please!