As a publicist I know how easy it is to be human, and not be the perfect PR person your clients want all the time. Which is why until now, I haven’t mentioned to anyone (not even my husband) how poor of a social branding & reputation management job 360i has done for The Children’s Place. I know it can be very difficult to make everyone happy all of the time. But, after months have gone by, you start to ask yourself, Why?
Why would you run a campaign for your client, in this case, 360i’s client was the Childrens Place, on a very well known and highly visible social site for your target audience (mothers), like TwitterMoms, and then leave your winners hanging for months? Having many of them ask (I am sure many more of them watching from the sidelines as well) where their prize was for creating the buzz, and not ever hearing anything back from the PR person. Again, I emphasize…We Are All Human! However, if you have a certain number of winners, and you have only sent out a certain number of prizes, you would know that you had missed something somewhere. Here is the other thing, since this is a social site, all the pr company had to do was to go back to the page where the contest was being announced and go through profile by profile (dig a bit deeper if needed) and decide who had been sent a prize and who had not.
Now, here is where the story gets just a bit more interesting. The Children’s Place didn’t help themselves out in this particular case either. After a call that had been made to their offices for a completely different reason (asking a question about an online purchase) their CSR was asked about the TwitterMoms promotion, and if there was some way to find out when the prize (gift cards in this case) would be mailed to the winners. To the CSR’s defense, she did all the right things, she put the customer on hold, found out who or where the customer should be directed, came back on the line and informed the customer that someone from marketing would get back with her, and took the customers name and number, and politely ended the call.
Whoever was in charge in marketing either didn’t get the message or didn’t care, either way…it wasn’t good. The Children’s Place now has shot themselves in the foot, by not making sure that the customer was taken care of. Here is where the story moves forward, and you really get to see how poorly a brand can look, as well as the company that is representing them.
With no word from The Children’s Place the customer decides to go back to where the contest page is and see if anyone else is still waiting. No word has been left for approximately 2 months, either because the damage has been done, or because everyone else has received their prize. Not knowing, an email is sent to Megan Calhoun, owner of TwitterMoms, which she quickly forwards on to 360i. 360i is quick to respond to the email stating that they are sorry "Due to a clerical error… " they will be sending out the prize.
Here is where a simple mistake can turn deadly! The customer gets the email stating that rather than the $50 prize they were sent a $200 prize. Excited the customer starts spending it in her head, but then realizes that she just can’t not step forward and let them know that they made a mistake. The customer emails the PR company with all the details, and the PR companies response is "Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention! Since I did ship out two $100 cards, if there’s any way you can ship back one of them – or even better, break one $100 into two $50s at the store – and then send it back, that would be amazing. If that’s too difficult, I absolutely understand and hope that you enjoy your shopping."
Now, what is a customer supposed to think? First off, its not completely clear…do you only want $100 back? Do you want $150 back? Is the customers local Children’s Place going to do that for the customer?
Beyond that…who on earth does that? You tell the customer to keep it..you thank them for their honesty, and you uphold your clients credibility and branding to the best of your ability and in doing so, you come out smelling like a rose! You turn an unfortunate incident into a spectacular rebound!
UPDATE (August 10, 2009): I rarely update posts like this, but, a point that should have been made above is that the gift cards were supposed to be overnighted (the employee repeatedly said that the cards were being overnighted using FedEx). The gift cards were not overnighted, and better yet, the small disaster that could have been avoided (you know customer perception and their perception of how much you value them) by having sent it on time in the first place, but, then avoiding sending the customer on a trek to fix your mistake!
Again the PR company makes another mistake. Not only did they not send the gift card, but, they emailed to say that they had fixed the problem, there will be no need to run around and fix the gift card issue, they have. OH No! you just took and made your company and the Children’s Place look even that much more ridiculous. I could replay the steps from above on how this could have been avoided, but, competency must not be 360i’s strong point.
I would love to hear your opinion as I am sure others would too! Leave a comment (or two) below.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I don’t even know where to start, and in all honesty I don’t want to because if I do i’ll never stop.
One thing i’ll say is two things are obvious here, (1). It shows that the PR company is not properly structured or organized because as a PR company they should know the most important thing to a company is how your customers perceive you, (2). It shows that they have no regard for the customer (the one who makes and breaks the company in the first place), so even before they have been established both businesses (PR and Children’s Place) already have no sustainable future.