A person spends $3,500 at a CompUSA liquidation sale. A digital camera is among the items purchased. Once at home it is discovered the camera box is empty. This consumer contacts the company. In short they say, 'Oh well, you should have checked the box before you left the store. All sales are final.'
'Final?' Oh really? Corporate social media laggards today either don't get it, or they don't think it is real, or they don't think it can touch them. In this case this story shifted into exponential velocity over the Internet in less than 100 hours and ended up on FoxNews.com.
Special thanks to Kevin at digTrends for bringing this story to my attention. His final paragraph sums it up beautifully:
The CompUSA issue is the perfect example of why it is important to enlist the assistance of people who understand the social media space and the industry. Although everyone may love your brand now, one person mistreated can cause a world of trouble in just four days. Take the initiative and start the conversation with your customers before they feel compelled to tarnish your reputation and forever leave a negative footprint online.
Of tremendous interest concerning CompUSA's not-so-Competent handling of the situation is from this post on the Church of the Customer Blog. It details how the consumer/blogger's story went from zero to sticky in four days.
Summarizing the chronology of events sublimely recounted by the Church of the Customer Blog, here's what happened:
June 2: Terry posts on his blog the response he got from the CEO's office...
June 3: The Lost Remote blog writes about Terry's story. 211 people comment...
June 4: The story is posted to Digg where it's digg'd 2,607 times with 210 comments and rises to the number 2 story in the Digg Business section. The story hits the front page of BoingBoing. CNET.com mentions the story in their video show "The Queue." Over 50 blogs write about Terry's story.
June 5: Terry finally gets a call from CompUSA apologizing for the situation and promising a $300 gift certificate from the store. Terry's story is on the front page of FoxNews.com, with the caption "Image problem."
Image problem, indeed. Imagination problem, too, I submit.
Is it corporate arrogance, ignorance, indifference, a false sense of immunity or what? Is it possible anyone in corporate public relations is unaware this sort of thing is happening every day? It's time these communicators pull their heads out of the... sand... or pull their executives heads out of the... sand... and get with the program.
link to original post