Just last week I received the first ever Email newsletter from Safeway. I had used their home delivery once or twice mostly as a novelty to see what it was like. I really didn’t want or need to get correspondence from them, I’m more of a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” type of person, unless of course I intentionally opt in for something. When I did receive the first message from Safeway, I was disturbed to be taken to a website with a login page when I clicked the unsubscribe button. I’ve already written that rule #1 of Email Marketing should be “1 Click Opt out and add me to the “don’t ever send me Email again” list. Obviously me having to login does not meet those criteria, in fact if I’ve forgotten my password (I had) I really don’t want to do a password recovery and waste more time to opt out of this message that is already wasting my time. So what do I do? I took it to Twitter…
The Complaint
Thankfully one of my Twitter friends @katiefelten also RT:
So in all honesty, I had no idea what would occur now. Would Safeway be listening? I had already verified they had a Twitter account. It turns out they were listening and responded:
Acknowledgement
So that was decent of them, at least they were listening and responded. That is certainly better than nothing, right? So I decided to make another suggestion, just driving the point home so to speak:
Suggestion
The Adjustment
Then I sort of did what I should and forgot all about it. This morning I received another message from Safeway. “Joe, MORE Exclusive Coupons Are Here!” oh snap, I guess I better test the unsubscribe rather than assume they did not listen. Much to my surprise it brought me to a screen where I could easily opt out of all of the newsletters. Here is a partial screenshot:
What can we learn from this?
Ultimately I have to say I am impressed with Safeway’s response and approach. I learned that they are:
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Sometimes I feel like Social Media is my only outlet to respond to bad service or poor policies. I really try to go out of my way to help companies that provide good services and products, but on occasion I have written bad reviews on Yelp. I certainly won’t be giving Michael Finney a run for his money, but it’s nice to know that you can have a positive impact in some cases by choosing to exercise your voice in Social Media.
Share YOUR story
Have you used Social Media to influence a similar situation? I’d love to hear your examples in the comment section below.
Great acticle Joe and I totally agree that “Sometimes I feel like Social Media is my only outlet to respond to bad service or poor policies.”and I have a story as well …
I was traveling to Atlanta and I was flying @MidwestAirlines and our plane was delayed. I tweeted my frustration and much to my surprise @MidwestAirlines responded asked where i was going and what flight I was on, then responded back that there was a big storm in my destination but it had passed and we would be on our way shortly.
Now nothing was really fixed (I was still delayd) but I was happy that someone was listening and responded.
Bingo. Great share. This is getting Tweeted!!! ha ha
@JMattHicks Thanks Matt! Glad you enjoyed it.
@KatieFelten That’s a great story Katie. I definitely appreciate the support, you had a hand in the outcome I am confident of that. Thanks for helping make it work.
Very interesting Joe. I’m glad you followed this up and reported on it. It demonstrates a whole series of things about the effectiveness, convenience and power of social media, as well as how we should monitor and respond.
@RickHendershot thanks Rick, and I love your summary it could have been the title for the article: “The effectiveness, convenience and power of social media” excellent summary of what is covered in the post. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving and please come again.
Joe
Hope I don’t have to Twitter to get a response from Safeway on the unedible pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner I bought from them this year. Happy with previous years dinners, but this year no one asked for seconds on anything and people just picked at their first servings. The leftovers are sitting in the fridge, truly left over and passed over. I will be contacting them for a refund. There was about a gallon of some scary liquid that came out of the turkey and after much longer the warming time recommended the turkey was still not warm. And it was ugly, a strange brownish grey color.
Hope I don’t have to Twitter to get a response from Safeway on the unedible pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner I bought from them this year. Happy with previous years dinners, but this year no one asked for seconds on anything and people just picked at their first servings. The leftovers are sitting in the fridge, truly left over and passed over. I will be contacting them for a refund. There was about a gallon of some scary liquid that came out of the turkey and after much longer the warming time recommended the turkey was still not warm. And it was ugly, a strange brownish grey color.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@MickeyMccarthy I think the lesson to be learned from Joe’s story is that if you tweet your little story you’re almost guaranteed to get a response from Safeway. We know they monitor their “mentions”, and this is a pretty damaging story. So the chances are pretty good they’ll see your tweet. Along with lots of other people.
@jmatthicks Hey Matt, do you see the duplicate comment by Rick above? I was going to delete the duplicates but wanted to let you guys look at it in case it was caused by a bug?
@MickeyMccarthy Hi Mickey, I’ll tweet this out and see if they respond to you. It will be interesting to see if they do. Sorry to hear about your negative experience, hopefully you had a nice holiday in spite of it. 🙂
@hackmanj Hey Joe we noticed that this morning and we’re working on it. Thanks for reaching out and we’ll let you know what we find!
@jmatthicks You guys are on top of it as usual, well done. Thanks.