The Market is a Conversation

KPLC launches a Twitter account @kenyapower

In all honesty I have to congratulate them for this… They are brave and hopefully this is an avenue they can use to better their customer relations. However, as you can only imagine they have been met with an immense amount of hostility online… To an extent that they have asked people to be civil.

Now they’ve done a great thing taking the first step to open a Twitter account however, what is one to do when almost all of the responses you receive are negative?

Crisis management in the line of fire as far as social media is concerned begins with establishing honesty and respect. KPLC needs to be honest, if they are having issues, they need to be the first to tweet (for example power cuts), but they should not stop there, they need to explain to their followers how they expect to solve it as soon as possible and with as little inconvenience for their customers.

Respect simply involves taking what your followers and customers have to say seriously. Actually give a damn about complaints and address them. They’re paying customers, your bread and butter and you are not doing them any favors with your service, it’s their right.

People are human, KPLC needs to have a human touch in their communications, allowing that yes they have flaws but they are 100% committed to actual improvements and a focus to exceeding their clients expectations wouldn’t hurt either.

Once people have at least appreciated your honesty and your truthful commitment to handle their issues you can follow up with the guideline below:

• You MUST have a crisis plan for your organization whether  you are making use of social media or not.

• Make friends before a crisis happens - if someone does start making negative comments about you, having a community of loyal fans may help silence them.

• Listen closely. As soon as something hits you want to know about it as soon as possible. Only noticing an “I hate your company” group on Facebook or bad customer service blog after two weeks of activity might be too late. Having someone responsible for monitoring online mentions of your company is the best way to do this.

• Prepare your response beforehand. It is possible, within reason, to have a good guess at the likely crisis’ you might face. Decide what these are and prepare “black pages” of your response which can go live on your web site if/when it happens, these will be useful if they can stop the flow of negative comments hours or days earlier than if you were working from scratch.

• Please don’t give up and quit, the problem will not go away, this is social media. People will simply open hate pages and Twitter handles ‘representing’ you and use it to continue to negatively impact your brand.

So, kudos to you KPLC and best wishes, please make it better