How to go viral with remarkable service

Early yesterday morning I was tweeting with my friend Danny Brown about DISQUS and the incredible service they delivered during his WordPress upgrade, which did not go that smoothly (As an aside, check how rich the comments are with DISQUS).

In short, Danny upgraded to WordPress 2.8 before upgrading his Thesis Theme and his blog crapped it’s pants.

Within this context, DISQUS comes along and manually imported his comments!

And I thought this was very cool.

Kick-ass service gets people talking.

DISQUS came through, dropped everything for Danny, and now he and I were tweeting about it. Uh… and now, I’m writing a blog post about it.

I repeat – kick-ass service gets people talking.

Think about it. We don’t really talk about good service, because we expect good service. But we do talk about kick-ass service – because it’s unexpected. We tweet about it, we stumble it, we bookmark it, we blog about it.

So where I’m going with this?

@Zappos_service

So, while we were talking about DISQUS, Zappos came into my mind.

I’m a huge fan of their shoes, service and pricing, and know that they have an army of employees on Twitter. And from what I’ve read, these employees are happy to talk about Zappos on Twitter – because they feel empowered to be spokespeople. But I’ve never interacted with them on Twitter – until today.

So I tweeted back to Danny:

And about 3 hours later I got this reply:

I bantered back and forth with the Zappos service guys in a very human way. Nothing deep, just conversation:

Passive presence – AKA “listening”

The Zappos service folks didn’t try to sell me anything. But they were there to help me - in case I did need anything. Their “passive presence” on Twitter has a huge impact on how much people talk about them, and blog about them.

The new remarkable math

Expected service = No blog post or tweets.
Remarkable content = Lots of blog posts and tweets.
Unexpected service = Also, lots of blog posts and tweets.

The lesson?

If you don’t have kick ass content, at least have kick-ass service.

P.S. If you’re interested, @TheDailyBlonde and I will be presenting a teleseminar on June 30th called, “How to Use Twitter for Business and Still Have a Personality”.

Posted June 24, 2009

Rod0114

Great post. For some people I can see the frustration, not everyone is willing to work as hard and provide that kind of service.
backlinks

nice post, thanks for sharing
Tess

Works the other way on as well. I tweeted in frustration recently about problems I was having with cellphone company 3phones. They don't appear to have any presence on Twitter, and certainly didn't pick up my reference to them. I didn't really expect them to, but if they had, they could have transformed my experience to a positive one. Another nail in their useless coffin!
Nathan Driver

Having to stay on top of your brand is extremely important and not enough businesses are doing this, which still baffles me to this day.

In return this is hurting them b/c people NEED to feel connected and to be able to put a name w/ a brand is HUGE!

I recall have a tech error with @dimdim - tweeted it - less than 2 minutes and techie for the company contacted me and within 5 minutes it was fixed. Now, I talk about it the use of that company's service any chance I can.
.-= Nathan Driver´s last blog ..Why Are College’s Behind The Times? =-.
Danny Brown

Any post that can use "his blog crapped its pants" is A-OK with me! ;-)

I have to admit, I was more than a little taken aback at just how well DISQUS put themselves out there (particularly @Giannii, who did the import for me).

Maybe it's because they're the "underdog", considering Automattic (the WordPress creators) now own IntenseDebate (DISQUS's competitors, if you like), and DISQUS feels the need to offer better service to overcome lesser brand awareness?

One thing I do know, though - previously I was dubious about DISQUS. I'd heard there were issues with spam filtering (haven't come across it yet) and it also means relinquishing control of your comments to a third-party app. BUT...

If this is the kind of service they offer, I feel a lot better having them in my corner.

Cheers for bringing it up, John, and nice one with the Zappos team as well :)
.-= Danny Brown´s last blog ..Why Semanti Smart Search is Going to Rock Your Social Web Experience =-.
giannii

=)
John Haydon

Thanks, Danny.
.-= John Haydon´s last blog ..How to go viral with remarkable service =-.
Tammie

Great post! Kick-ass service clearly has its benefits. I do wonder, though, how many companies approach social media this way. My guess is, most companies decide to engage in social media so as to shut up the complainers before they do too much damage to their brand. Then again, does intention matter? I suppose it matters only so much as it influences whether the service is good or kick-ass.

I'm curious about how you think this applies to the social sector. I am very interested in how nonprofits measure their service to donors, as it seems so few do so and yet it plays such a large role in their donor retention rate. Thanks for yet another thought-provoking post!
John Haydon

It applies the same with the social sector. For example, if a non-profit is having an offline event (an AIDS walk or something), they could monitor Twitter and other sites (passive presence) to see who needs help. Someone may tweet, “Where can I sign up to start a fundraising page?” or “I wonder if AIDSWalkSF has plans for live music?” They could also thank new people signing up or congratulate milestones for individual fundraisers.

In the end, non-profits should be thinking the same way a corporation does: “How can I help my donors and supporters? What are they asking for? How can we provide a remarkable experience for them?”
.-= John Haydon´s last blog ..How to go viral with remarkable service =-.
David Leonhardt

Some things don't change, just the method of delivery. Kick-ass service will always be huge.
.-= David Leonhardt´s last blog ..Who owns your Twitter account? =-.
John Haydon

Exactly. But when people talk about viral, they usually talk about the content, not service.