By Rob Everton
The business books about blogs and conversational marketing are full of stories where companies failed to respond to negative criticism with speed, honesty, and transparency. Most, if not all, paid a hefty price for their slow old-school approach. Circuit City recently proved that they have not read these books or, if they have, they chose not to heed their warnings.
A customer brought in his Hondacar for a navigation system installation. The Circuit City team that did the work botched the job horribly, resulting in $12,119 in damage to the car. Honda, who evaluated the car, refused to give the car back to the owner in it’s current state, declaring it a danger to drive. Circuit City refused to pay for the repairs, offering only to cover the cost of the system for which the customer paid – not the damages inflicted by their installers.
All it took was a forum post about his experience and the story spread like wildfire. It was quickly picked up by the Carsumer Advocacy site and the Consumerist. The Consumerist article received over 3,600 “diggs” and made it to the front page of digg.com. Then, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht opted to share the story in their wildly popular weekly podcast, Diggnation, which goes out to hundreds of thousands of technology fans (the “influencers”). In this episode, Kevin and Alex pointed out that no one in the tech community would EVER use Circuit City for a car installation ever again. The damage had been done.
This past week, Circuit City agreed to cover the cost of the damages and threw in some extra gear. To be more accurate, their insurance company is covering the cost less $2,000. Circuit City was too late. They should have given this man a cool new car and enjoyed the great PR from their quick positive response. Now no one knows for sure if Circuit City did the right thing because they new it was the right thing or because they were getting hammered in the court of public opinion. I bet they would gladly go back in time and spend the $25K on a new Civic with navi.
The new world: Listen. React quickly, honestly, and positively to negative criticism. Get your blog going. Bad customer experiences can ripple through the internet like a tsunami.