Why Twitter Should Matter To You 102: UHaul Edition

I find it immensely difficult to explain Twitter to individuals and clients who are not currently involved in the platform.  In my effort to demystify it, I posted Why Twitter Should Matter To You 101: Olympic Edition last week.  In this post I discussed three ways that a newbie could begin to see the value in Twitter using a nice, friendly worldwide event as a reference point. 

I didn't anticipate the Why Twitter Should Matter to You becoming a series - but low and behold here we are.   Today I saw something go down on Twitter that I couldn't NOT write about - simply because it applies to so many companies today.  Companies that likely look at Twitter as one of those "geeky kid" things that don't have real impact on their bottom line.  So Lesson #2 for those of you who are trying to get your arms around Twitter:   While Twitter is incredibly helpeful for a brand or an individual who wants to get proactively involved in a conversation - it's also an essential customer service tool in today's fast paced social media environment.  Speed kills.  And nowhere are brands built up, and torn down, faster than Twitter.  For example, today David Alston (@DavidAlston) of Radian6 and tweetpr tweeted this:

"My wife just went through a totally rude customer service experience with our local UHaul rep. Downright rude. Do they want the business?"

David has over 1,500 "followers" on Twitter, who see his updates on Twitter or directly on their mobile devices.  Within an hour, nearly two dozen others (including myself) had used Twitter to responded with their own UHaul woe.

• "Uhaul does NOT care. Period." @FreshFocus (415 followers)
• " I've learned never to use UHaul! They screwed up my move and offered me a $5 gift certificate?!?!" @karimkanji (75 followers)
• " UHaul has quite the reputation. Poor customer service is almost an art form. [link to Consumerist posts on UHaul" @jmoriarty (405 followers)
• "In my experience, Uhaul has some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They don't care." @adamlevenson (213 followers)
• "UHaul hands down has the worst customer service I have ever dealt with in my life. Phone and face-to-face." @paul177 (48 followers)
• "Some of the absolute worst customer service experiences I have ever had came from dealing with UHaul agents [in Halifax]." @quietrevolution (153 followers)
• "after my move on Saturday...I hate UHaul...awful service" @prkeener (52 followers)
• "thousands of horror stories about them, I'm lucky my local Uhaul is great." @unmarketing (656 followers)
• "Just back from maddening trip to Uhaul to get our money back for failed hitch install. Contemplating my options." @rynosoft (128 followers)
• "I will NEVER use Uhaul again. I have had way too many problems with them - bad equipment, oversold equipment, etc." @KeenerGuy (119 followers)
• "I've rented some from them. I've just walked in, and turned off all my needs. Their CS people are just about useless." @novartis (43 followers)
• "Uhaul! Argh...broken axel, 115 degrees, I-5 in San Joaquin Valley, and they cannot find me. Took 6hrs to get back on the road." @josephwilburn (93 followers)
• "I hate Uhaul. Reserved a trailer to move from Boston to DC 6 weeks out, only to find out (when *I* called) they didn't have one." @CatchUpLady - ME! (247 followers)
• "got lots of UHaul horror stories. Worked there while in college. Where do I submit?" @ChrisJohnson (1,163 followers)
• "uHaul has pitiful customer service" @duncanfreeman (216 followers)
• "My guess is many consumers aren't aware of other choices and suffer through UHaul anyways" @brandonzeman (45 followers)
• "I think some companies survive *in spite of* horrendous service. Uhaul fails on many levels. poorly maintained trucks too." @brightwhite (191 followers)
• "UHaul sounds like the equivalent of the Royal Mail in the UK, poor customer service, rude, never on time, frequently lost items." @6consulting (84 followers)
• "I'm going to need a moving truck soon, always just went with uhaul...maybe I should try another company this time around" @johnsgunn (125 followers)

So, for those of you playing along at home - in less than two hours, dozens of people responded to a single Tweet regarding UHaul, and effectively told 3,763 other people that they disliked the brand.  And the conversation is still going.  Someone just posted the CEO's cell phone number.

For a company that is not "listening" to social media - this tree just fell in the forest, and nobody heard it.  Whatever the corporate line is for not participating in social media (fear of losing control of the message, man hours required to staff a digital program, etc.) there is no doubt that situations like this not only hurt a brand's corporate reputation online and off, but actually impact consumers purchase decisions.  One of the most recent Tweets indicates that one individual is now contemplating using another moving company as a result of these conversations.  Ouch.

So what's the flip side of this?  A company that IS listening can turn a negative situation like this into a positive.  What if UHaul was already on Twitter, and used tools like Twitter Search or Tweetscan to follow brand related conversation.  What if they said "thanks" to those who shared positive stories, and offered discount coupons and apologies to those who shared unfavorable experiences? 

Dozens of brands are currently using Twitter in this way, and I would argue its an incredibly effective, and totally essential customer service tool.  I have personally experienced this sort of Twustomer service from Pandora, as I have issues with my music player.   As a result, instead of going on a rant about them on my blog, Facebook and Twitter, I felt like I was being listened to and someone on the other end cared.  And now they're one of my favorite Web 2.0 customer service stories (even though my problem can't be resolved!)

Certain brands have a looooong row to hoe to improve their customer service, and getting on Twitter would be the online equivilent of putting a bandaid on a bullet wound - but it's a pretty vocal bullet wound, and could be a great first step as a company makes deeper, more meaningful customer service improvements.

This post is republished on Ogilvy PR's 360 Digital Influence Blog.

Comments

[David Alston]

Thanks for the great post. You know, it's interesting how when a single consumer has a bad customer experience on their own they grumble about it, get in a bad mood perhaps and maybe tell a couple folks at work about it the next day. They feel that maybe it's just them, and that nobody else had an experience like the one they had. They think about the person they dealt with on the other end - "maybe they were having a bad day", "maybe they didn't get enough training", "maybe they aren't getting any organizational support and feel frustrated". We tend to come up with excuses to try to validate this rotten experience we just went through because it's out of the ordinary - but in a bad way.

Now enter social media and tweeting about the experience you just had. I was literally overwhelmed with the responses. I had no idea that UHaul had treated others in a similar way. So perhaps it wasn't an isolated thing, maybe it was a universal problem with the company - for whatever reason.

And it was a great discussion too. I received possible theories on why it may have happened - monopoly positioning, focus on price, lack of training, dealer network setup etc... What great insight - and as a marketing person - I started to get drawn into this discussion and to forget the customer service mess I just went through.

What happened was:

- a market validation that indeed an issue existed based on the number of responses and the speed in which they came in
- a mini-strategic focus group on possible root causes for the resulting customer service experience I received
- possible alternatives to consider (in this case, Penske) which I immediately decided to act on and book - canceling UHaul.
- ways to escalate my issue (got the cell number for the CEO of UHaul who said he was open to fix these types of problems - I sent him a text message to drop me a line - no response yet)

Bottom line - a treasure trove of information for any UHaul exec to dig into and potentially use to help solve the bigger problems they are facing. A list of influential social media contacts who had bad experiences with UHaul that cared enough to share them and maybe would care enough to help UHaul fix them if they asked.

But will this be a tree that falls in the forest where no one at UHaul hears. I hope not. They appear to be coasting on brand goodwill from the past. Perhaps it's enough to carry them forward for years to come. Or perhaps another moving truck company will appear on the scene and learn from this UHaul experience and create and offering so remarkable that people will tweet it and blog about it. Could this be Penske? Could it be a new brand? Only time will tell.

Thanks for great discussion.

[Warren Sukernek]

Sounds like U-Haul could use a Twittervention! Nice post highlighting the groundswell of conversations about brands on Twitter and the importance for those brands to join the conversation (Sorry, JJ).

[Doug Meacam]

U-Haul's atrocious customer service is legendary. In my first and last experience with them a few years ago, they promised the truck, but at the last minute told me I had to pick it up at a location 25 miles from my house even though there was an U-Haul station less than 2 miles from me, and they wanted me to pay for the additional mileage. Like David, I shared the experience via Twitter and got several responses that echoed my frustration.

There are three types of B2C companies out there. 1) Those who are listening to their customers to build a better experience, 2) those who aren't listening, but think they know what a good customer experience is, and 3) those who simply don't care.

All the examples you shared clearly indicate that U-Haul falls into that last group and they have been there for a while now. It will be interesting to see if David contacting the CEO leads to any lasting changes. Call me cynical, but given U-Haul's franchise model and long history of bad customer service, I doubt that change will be coming any time soon.

[Brandon Zeman]

I was planning on doing this exact same post! As I was watching David tweet about U-Haul, I couldn't help but think that this is exactly why every company needs to respect and monitor social media, and more importantly, be positively involved. I've never had an experience with U-Haul, but I can just about promise that after this fiasco, I won't be calling them when I need moving services.

I just discovered your blog and I must say its great! Very excited to read more!

[Steve Woodruff]

Thanks for pulling all this together. These are exactly the kinds of case studies we need to see in order to help make the case for the business impact of social media. And since bad news is shared so widely, we can easily put a multiplier on all the numbers you've shown - then add a "time" multiplier since the negative testimonies are archived on-line. OUCH!

[Jeannie Walters]

Great post! I recently blogged about how one small experience at a store led me to both blog and tweet immediately. The results will start playing out and we will see a revolution - I hope!

One of the ways to deteriorate customer experience is to get feedback and NOT do anything with it. Feedback is there for the taking - companies just have to catch up and act.

[Truck Bed Covers]

Good for UHaul. I've used Twitter, but it seems to not be as user friendly as Facebook or MySpace.

[moving company]

I have used U-Haul once and it was a terrible experience. It's crazy how twitter can start a snowball effect with negative responses. They really should get on to twitter and put out this fire.

[Juicy Couture Bags]

Please make yourself a quilt, just so you can San The Ugandan National Basketball League didn’t actually start until April 18, but there was plenty of action going when I got back. I’d been appointed as a FUBA (Federation of Uganda Basketball Associations) executive member the previous year when a completely new group of Federation Executives had been elected.

[Air Jordan]

Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all. Do you agree?

[Shop Jerseys]

Serious fan of the website, lots of your articles have truly helped me out. Awaiting up-dates!

[Car shipping quotes]

Twitter is a great tool across the board! It is good for your family, and you can do one for work.

[Moving companies]

Twitter is something I like to use to keep my family updated on what I am doing and where I am going. It is a great way to communicate, without wasting the time to call.