A few weeks ago, I was having dinner at a restaurant in Austin. Although I’m sure the restaurant is lovely with any other server, my experience was terrible. Before the spiral of bad service unfolded, I had checked in on FourSquare.
Skip to a few days later, the restaurant sends a tweet asking me what my favorite margarita was and setting me up for an “OMG…I love this place” Retweet. I ignored them. But then I started thinking about the dangers of soliciting positive feedback, as opposed to engaging me more along the lines of “how was it?” or “thanks for coming.”
I compare this experience to two other recent unsolicited tweets I received. One was from The Algonquin Hotel (@AlgonquinNYC). Before travelling, I tweeted that I was looking forward to staying there on a certain date. Time went by and on the day of my check-in, they tweeted back with “Welcome! Enjoy your stay!” Way to keep track of your guests on Twitter. Awesome!
Two weeks later, a got a tweet from Delta. I mentioned something about the best part of flying Delta being the leftover Biscoff cookies (I’m lookin’ at you, pretzels and peanuts). An unsolicited tweet from Delta’s customer service account (@DeltaAssist) came back a minute later: “I totally agree; Biscoff cookies, Yum-Yum :-). ^BH” Totally silly, and totally winning me over.
This was a long post. I’ll make my point much more succinct:
Simple, thoughtful interaction is so much more effective than an aggressive hunt for compliments and conversation.
As a senior vice president at Cookerly, Matt helps organizations protect and advance their reputations and bottom lines through strategic communications programs. Using creativity, planning and flawless execution, he works with a team to deliver compelling public relations campaigns that produce results and support clients’ business objectives.
As senior vice president at Cookerly, Mike Rieman specializes in building and maintaining relationships with the media and has an excellent track record of landing significant placements in print and broadcast media including USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Money Magazine.
As vice president of Cookerly, Sheryl Sellaway uses her extensive corporate communications background to lead consumer PR efforts, deliver strategy for marketing programs and share expertise about community initiatives.
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