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Blog Post Week 3 Part 1

Hi friends! I hope that everyone is enjoying this class and the spring 2018 semester so far! Communication is a tricky thing to manage in general and then once you take it to a social platform things can be misread and misunderstood. Things can get taken out of context and people can make assumptions are that are not always accurate. This only makes it that much more important that businesses work to establish clear communication. This can be done in many ways.
I have had many positive and negative experiences with communicating with different companies. My biggest negative experience through communicating with a business was with a new start up company who had sent a defective product in the mail. Basically the product arrived at my doorstep broken. Allot of the miscommunication was because we were chatting via email and the majority of the conversation was automatized and done in a not so timely manner. By time I had reached an actual human being as opposed to dealing with an automated system, my 14 days to request a return or exchange had come and gone, and their only response was that the product must have been damaged in the mail. Because I did not opt for paying for insurance, I was basically out of luck and there was nothing that they could do for me. While the business still profited off of my purchase, I feel that they lost something much more valuable, my loyalty and future business.
Yes! Social media actually made it allot easier to communicate with the Hydrate Spark company, I was actually able to converse with a real person through Instagram about my product issue through commenting on a post and was able to get the process moving much quicker than if I had to strictly go through email. While this did not solve the actual problem, it did aid in getting ahold of the company in order to deal with my issue.
I have had many positive experiences communicating with businesses through social media. One of the best experiences I have had was through Victoria Secret Pink. As a loyal customer and college student, I follow the VSPink college brand and social media pages and accounts. One day I saw a post requiting campus reps for different colleges throughout California. While I eagerly wanted to apply, MiraCosta was not a listed college campus for the brand. After going through the whole list, I realized that it was not just community colleges that were excluded, but that allot of UC and Cal State schools were not listed as well. So I took the conversation to their Instagram post and added my opinion that they could get lots of business by adding more colleges to their campus line up, and they actually sent me a direct message thanking me for my opinion and that they would look into adding more college campuses. Regardless of whether or not this will actually be implemented during my college experiences, I was able to leave the conversation feeling valued and included which solidified my loyalty for Victoria Secret Pink.
Responding to feedback is so important when it comes to social media for your brand or business. That is why we have social media. Social media allows for two way communication to happen between customers and companies. I personally would make a point to address as many of the comments and feedback as possible. I feel that it is easy to respond to negative feedback as I would validate the customer's problem and then problem solve to find solution that resolves the issue. Both positive and negative feedback should be acknowledged as a way of making people feel heard and included. I feel that so much positive feedback gets taken for granted through social media as it is so easy to merely address the negative issues so that those comments get resolved, but then all of the positive feedback gets put on the back burner and ignored. Which is so sad because by simply liking a comment or acknowledging and thanking a person goes such a long way in the social media world.

Comments

  1. I agree with your opening statement that communication is tricky thing to manage in general. Miss concepts happen everyday for variety of reasons. Understanding intentions, verbal and non verbal cues, and language used in emails or hand written documents can through best of us through loop. Being clear a directly to the point can eliminate gray area. You used strong examples with Hydrate Spark Company and Victoria Secret. I agree that Social Media has become intermediary for company's to work directly with customers, eliminating phone waiting times, and sending multiple email requests. Well written,in depth analysis, on importance of clear concise communication, and tying it directly to social media.

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  2. I'm sorry to hear about your problems with the company, that's so frustrating and it's always so irritating to have to deal with that and not have them work with you to fix the problem. I also agree with you that a lot of the times just the positive feed back gets overlooked because all they answer to is the negative and companies should keep their happy customers happy as well!

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  3. Yes, I also have to say that it's easy to send out the wrong message over social media. Good communication goes a long way. My experience dealing with negative customers is using empathy. acknowledging and understanding what they are going through. Because we just simply don't know what the person is going through or dealing with in their personal life. Last thing I want is someone coming back to try and shoot up the place because of a bad experience.

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