Hey Tim, Defensiveness never works — that’s for sure. Completely unproductive, yet very natural.

As for some of the big online services, I have had a number of challenges over the years as well. Most are not setup for human problem solving — and sometimes that is all that will work!

Being out of the corporate world I don’t deal so much with complaints these days, although I’ve done plenty of role plays and complaint handling in my time!

It’s hard not to feel or get defensive but that won’t ever get a resolution it will just deepen the complaint.

On the flip side, I recently felt compelled to complain to Yahoo about something and all I kept getting back were automated responses. I finally got a response from a human yesterday only to be told, click on this link here and this might answer your question. This just made things worse! Not the way to do customer service and it was from their Customer Care department!

Tell me about it Davina — #teamblogjack descended with a vengeance.

It’s funny… what you say about social media getting chopped up is exactly what people have been saying for years about customer service. The customer experience transcends almost every part of the organization. Kill the silos, etc.

This, this is why I get annoyed when social media gets cut up by department, all turf wars over who should ‘own’ it; it’s why I get annoyed when ‘delete, ignore negative feedback’ is part of the so-called strategy. “The magic is not found in a secret formula for handling complaints but in changing the attitude of our organizations.” There is opportunity here, to learn – this is free focus group, free research – if companies just realize it, change the way they think. And the magic formula, the secret weapon to me – then, now, always – communications. FWIW.

Thanks for stopping by Diane and for the testimonial on the book!

I appreciate it Mark! Here’s to more businesses seeing it as we do! 🙂

Thanks Laura! I agree; a lot of companies could benefit if they adopted this approach.