When a disgruntled customer created an anti-Standard Bank Twitter account (@standard_blank), the company blogged about the issue, saying that they believe everyone has the right to share and express their views in any medium they choose, and welcomed both praise and criticism via social media — and also shared a look from their side of the situation. Here’s an excerpt from their post:
Recently, a disgruntled customer has created an anti-Standard Bank twitter account (@standard_blank). In some cases, as in this instance, criticism stemmed from dissatisfaction with the way in which we handled an account. We take this seriously and have been in touch with this customer behind the scenes to try and resolve the issues raised. By trying to engage behind the scenes, we have come under fire for being ‘too quiet’, which is understandable, but we have no choice but to abide by our legal obligation to protect our customers’ confidentiality, which prevents us from having these types of conversation in the public domain.
The Lesson: When you’re working behind the scenes with an upset customer, people can only see the negative stuff — the angry Twitter updates, the upset blog posts, the negative reviews — so it’s up to you to share your side of the story and how you’re working to fix it.