One of the great things about social media is that it can be a 24/7 avenue to connect with your customers. While we all need to take some time off and rest, for large companies it can be a great way to constantly be listening and helping out your customers.
Similarly, no one expects instant answers via Twitter during non-business hours, but if you’re a massive company that interacts with millions of customers each year, it’s not appropriate to only be accessible during certain hours. British Airways is a great example of that.
Last week a man’s luggage went missing after a flight with them. After a few days of no help through the traditional routes, the man’s son tweeted the following:
British Airways didn’t respond for a quite while; as it turns out, their Twitter account is only “open” from 9-5 EST, Monday-Friday. That didn’t go over too well…
Ultimately, it made them look quite bad. If you’re small it doesn’t have to be 24/7, but at least keep your ears open. You probably won’t have a lot of inbound Tweets, so just set it up to ping your phone or email and peek at it once a day.
However, if you’re a company that earns tens of billions of dollars from millions of customers each year, it’s worth your time to hire a couple of extra folks to keep their ears open during the weekend.
You can read the fully story over on Marketing Pilgrim.
