Article

Price Chopper learns a social media lesson

Social media offers great potential for making connections, and that comes with its own unique set of risks.

September 23, 2010

What follows is an excerpt from one of RetailWire's recent online discussions featuring commentary from its "BrainTrust" panel of retail industry experts.

Social media is new territory for many companies, so mistakes happen. Of course, there are mistakes and then there are mistakes that make you wonder, "What the heck?"

A case in point was the response by an employee of Price Chopper to criticism directed to the company's Twitter account by a customer. The shopper wrote, "Every time I go into a @PriceChopperNY I realize why they are not @Wegmans. Tonight - bare produce areas."

Had the Price Chopper employee responded to the unhappy customer and offered an apology and a pledge to do better, perhaps the story would have ended there. But that isn't what happened.

The Price Chopper associate looked at the unhappy shopper's Twitter bio and discovered he was employed by a company that does business with the chain. In an email to executives at the customer's company, it was suggested his negative views of Price Chopper could jeopardize the working relationship between the two companies.

Hearing of this, Anthony Rotolo, a friend of the unhappy customer who is also an assistant professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, chose to blog about the incident. The result was that Price Chopper found itself having to address its employee's heavy-handed response.

Heidi Reale, director of consumer insights at Price Chopper, responded to Prof. Rotolo's blog.

"This associate [the Price Chopper employee] had no responsibility for, or permission from, Price Chopper to address customer complaints or the customer's employer," Ms. Reale wrote. "This is why we knew nothing about it when it was tweeted at us today. We are sorry for this unfortunate incident, and we are working to take the appropriate actions to repair the trust that has been compromised by this associate."

RetailWire BrainTrust comments:

Companies need to appoint employees that are well schooled in social media to handle these responsibilities and educate the rest of the team on how the company will appropriately respond to customer comments.

As long as there is social media, there will be criticism. Not every comment, good or bad, deserves a response. We advise our clients that sometimes it's better not to respond, but to sit back, wait a while, and see what other customers have to say. At other times, it's important to respond immediately. — Max Goldberg, founding partner, The Radical Clarity Group

Sure the employee handled it incorrectly, but at least their employees are passionate about their company. Here's the million dollar question: How many people who currently shop at Price Chopper are going to switch because of this incident? — Doug Fleener, president and managing partner, Dynamic Experiences Group