An Open Complaint to SiriusXM: The Hours Following the Post
A couple of days ago I wrote an article called Social Media Gone Wrong; An Open Complaint to SiriusXM, in which I threw the spotlight on the satellite radio giant for a number of issues both widespread and specific to me. Within hours of posting, the article quickly became one of the most viewed posts on my blog so I figured that in the interest of being fair and balanced the topic was worth a follow-up.
One of the claims that I made in the post was that SiriusXM had ignored all of the requests I made for help via social media (Twitter being the channel I turned to after numerous phone calls failed to solve my issue). While Twitter is not an official communications channel for the company I figured it was worth a shot, after-all one of the first rules of social media strategy is to monitor your mentions and reach out to your customers as applicable. Frustrated that no reply came after a handful of tweets over a 10 day period, I resorted to my blog, wrote the post, and published it through Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Admittadly, what happened next surprised me.
Social Media Gone Wrong; An Open Complaint to SiriusXM
In previous blog posts, we’ve looked at effective use of social media as a tool to enhance customer service, interact with your customers, and provide dynamic information to your customers (both current and prospects). Any social media consultant or power user will tell you (and we’re talking about businesses again here) that the absolute worst thing you can do is fail to monitor or respond to your Twitter account. Twitter is far more mainstream now than ever before, and users have come to expect that little bit more; the assumption is there that if you’re on Twitter, you’re actually on Twitter. That said, it’s certainly scalable and varies company by company; ideally you should be monitoring and responding at least daily, but for smaller companies a couple times a week, or weekly may be sufficient. Along this topic, let me share an example of a company that completely fails to understand this concept (or customer service in general).
In January of 2006 I became an XM Satellite Radio customer, and since that time have spent over $1700 on monthly service for several radios. In July of 2008 XM merged with (technically was acquired by) Sirius to form a new parent company (SiriusXM) to manage both companies. Technically the two companies operate separately, though to the end user they’re one in the same. The legacy XM and Sirius websites have been replaced by SiriusXM.com, and you can manage legacy XM, legacy Sirius, and new SiriusXM branded radios through this single portal. That said, there’s two areas where they have completely and utterly failed during this process. Charlie Sheen would wouldn’t say they’re #winning; to us IT folk maybe that becomes #!winning, or #<>winning.