More thoughts on the Best Buy misfire
by Joshua Tretakoff | VP, Account Management
Many of our clients focus on what their customers want to improve loyalty. Interestingly, the one common thread we’ve seen is that customers want honest information, quickly. In many cases, when mistakes are made, the speed of a response and the admission of the error engender customer loyalty in equal weight with the “hard benefits”. In fact, putting a human face on the situation is often the best way to make customers even more passionate.
With this week’s recent error (as Mark pointed out, Best Buy accidentally emailed 6.8 million members instead of 1,000 members with erroneous “Premier Black” membership notification), Best Buy made the best of the situation. First, the CMO, Barry Judge, currently participates in the microblogging service, Twitter. As soon as the error happened, he immediately posted this:
“This is a live issue. ‘Black’ is a test. 1000 people. Email pushed by mistake to 1 million. We r wrestling w/what to do. Thoughts?”
Notice the approach: Recognition, rapid response, acknowledgement, and engagement. He recognized the impact this would have on loyalty. Last night, he blogged about the incident, as well as their expected approaches. This level of transparency is practically a blueprint for how to handle the impact of an error in loyalty marketing. While I disagree with sending the apology email with the email that was sent by mistake again (uh…what was that about?), loyalty marketers can learn from this mistake and its response to better maintain their customers’ loyalty.
