2 weeks ago was Valentines Day and the weather in the Northeast was terrible…

Snow and ice covered the roads for most of the day.

The problem was that FTD and 1800Flowers had promised their customers “guaranteed delivery.”

As you guessed many of those orders where late, flowers were dead or undelivered…

This led to a social media beat down from their customers… There were so many negative tweets that it was a story on the local news…

Here are a few of the unhappy tweets –

Peter Kim ‏@mrpeterkim  Feb 15 @ftdflowers a loyal customer for 6 years, this experience is making me rethink your services for future occasions.

KWH ‏@kwh1183  Feb 15 @ftdflowers no resolution as of 11:20 central. No flowers received and even got salt in the wound that delivery actually happened via email

patrick parks sr ‏@pjuansr72  Feb 15 @1800flowers @pjuansr72 was very disappointed being my first time ordering from you guys 4 my order not 2 show up at my wife work very upset.

kathlyn watson ‏@kathlynn_mariee  Feb 13 #1800flowers @1800flowers this is absolutely PATHETIC .. My fiancé who is overseas is mortified right now. #appauled pic.twitter.com/Cm5kfDHaVq

If you search Twitter today you will still find people complaining about their experience…

I know you’re sitting there saying that the customers are being unreasonable – the weather was out of your control…

I agree and I think most of your customers will agree also –

But and it’s a big BUT –

Your apology must WOW them… Turn this situation into an opportunity to shine.

Make the apology so AWESOME that your customers can’t wait to tell it…

The news report that night could have been about what a great company FTD or 1800Flowers is, rather than how they failed…

What do you do if something is backordered, you need to reschedule an installation or you have a service call?

You have a chance to do something memorable… Are you?

I would love to hear how…

I’ve had a lot of success with Twitter.  I love this platform because it’s so easy to engage potential customers…

Here is a screen shot of a conversation that I had last week with an interior-decorating firm in Chicago.

Click on Image to Read the Conversation.

This Twitter conversation lasted maybe 10 minutes… Did I make a penny from it – no… Did I just create a raving fan – You Bet!!

Space Design does residential and commercial projects and has been in business since 1970 –

Do you think they have a few contacts??

Is it possible they recommend me for hardware on a future project?? Maybe…

Whether they do or they don’t is not important –

What’s important is Space Design considered me a resource and hopefully their 250 followers will too… Do you see how Twitter takes “word of mouth” to the next level?

Want another example?

I spent 2 minutes searching “organizing my closet” This is what I found –

Click to Enlarge.

If this isn’t a possible customer I don’t know what is??

My search found 3 more potential customers –

Click to Enlarge

To keep things in perspective this is a national search – you might only find one lead per day in your local market :0)

If this isn’t proof that you might want to add Twitter to your marketing mix, than I don’t know what is…

I would like to mention that I ripped off the idea for this post from the Great Gary Vaynerchuck… He recently did this with real estate agents – Here’s a link to his post.

I help individuals and organizations to be successful… If you have any questions about social media or hardware please contact me at 347-723-7433 or email me at richdemarco@optonline.net.