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criticism always caustic?


The "social sphere" was blowing up this morning mentioning our WeHelpU service company.  When influential Irene heard the news she was ecstatic; "our efforts are finally paying off"! Irene began to sift through the myriad social channels, skimming the posts and tweets.  It did not take long for her feelings of jubilation to shift to absolute horror as the context of their newfound "viral" popularity had flooded the Internet.  Apparently a customer had started a thread of conversation regarding one of our field workers, for now let's call him dumb-a** Dan. Dan had been hired a couple of months ago and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However with the new liberation in the state of California, Dan was observed by a customer toking away in the parking lot. Our customer's tweet read "my highly skilled field technician is in the parking lot getting high before working on my facility, wonder how this will turn out"?



So it started, in this age of "pathetic social pile-on" , the news of Dan is spreading faster than the bubbles rising from his crack pipe.  In the past this incident, which was clearly wrong, would have been isolated to a small group of individuals.  Service organizations have always solicited customer feedback and welcomed criticism, all part of the learning process.  Resolution came in the form of hitting the problem head-on, and in most instances provided an opportunity for us to strengthen client relationships.  Irene pondered; in the age of digitally connected distance (see past post "digital distance"), could it be that the reach of this "social wildfire" is controllable?  Is the excuse, "I can't control the social environments" really a cop-out?  Does criticism, at least when it gains exponential momentum, caustic?  



Overwhelmed Oscar, whom heretofore had been hiding under the desk, jumped up and exclaimed; "we can't control what people say; however, we can continue to build strong relationships and trust with our clients". 



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Next post:  who's data is it?
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