In my last post, I explained how to monitor what’s being said about your company and your competition in cyberspace. Here’s a dramatic story illustrating why you should.
At last week’s Mailorder Gardening Association conference, speaker Lena West of xynoMedia Technology related a remarkable story about her experience ordering flowers from FTD for her mother on Mother’s Day. Since Mom loves roses, Lena ordered the deluxe rose bouquet. When Mom called Lena to thank her, Lena asked what the bouquet looked like. “Oh, it’s beautiful – white daisies, red carnations…” You guessed it – not a single rose.
Naturally, Lena followed up with FTD. Suffice it to say that their response was less than satisfactory. Meanwhile, she was twittering about the whole experience.
Now, if you don’t know what Twitter is or didn’t realize that twittering is now a verb, you might find this New York Times article on How Twitter Can Help At Work interesting. The short answer is that Twitter is a blog consisting of posts (“Tweets”) of up to 140 characters.
Back to Lena and Mom’s bouquet. Lo and behold, Lena gets an email from 1-800-Flowers, who had evidently been monitoring what people were saying about FTD on Twitter. The email said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “We’re so sorry to hear about your experience with FTD. I hope you’ll consider using 1-800-Flowers the next time, and please use this 15% off coupon when you do. It has no expiration date and you can use it as often as you like. And if you’d care to send us your mom’s contact information, we’d be delighted to send her a replacement bouquet at no charge.”
Wow!
On the surface, the offer seems almost outrageously generous. Yet 1-800-Flowers will reap the benefits many times over. Lena is a nationally known speaker on social media, and blogs for Entrepreneur Magazine and FastCompany.com. You can be sure that she’s told many people about her flower-ordering experience, and they, like I, have passed the word. Now that’s viral!
