What can I say? I got it wrong. It's a fair cop. B&Q done good. And other such cliched coloquialisms. Joking apart, as a 'social media experiment', my tongue-in-cheek blogs were indeed picked up on twitter and you have to admire the speed and efficiency of the chaps and chapesses at the B&Q social media team.
Yup, the wee lass at the Slough depot wasn't exactly on form that fateful Tuesday and the "How did we do today"? online feedback form was unnecessarily complicated BUT from then on, B&Q did everything right.
The only reason I didn't find out until this Wednesday (4 Aug) that B&Q had been trying to contact me since 23 July was because I didn't know how to access messages on twitter. In fact, I didn't even know B&Q had sent me a message! (The only thing I'd spotted was that B&Q was 'following me'.)
Not deterred by my lack of social media expertise, B&Q continued to follow me and eventually tracked me down (despite the fact that I had typed my email address wrongly!!) and a very lovely lady from the CEO's office (yup, THE CEO!) first emailed me on Wednesday and then called me Thursday morning.
Bless her. This is a lady who hasn't forgotten how to talk to customers. She was warm, sincere and genuinely concerned. We ended up having a lovely little chat and even a joke about orange buckets.
This morning I received a very nice letter and a rather nice little gift card - the perfect response to this type of customer disastisfaction.
I have heard that 'certain people' make a habit of wingeing on twitter and facebook IN ORDER TO RECEIVE 'compensation'. So let me assure B&Q, and anyone else who might be reading this little missive, that that was never my attention and I will not be starting a series of blogs moaning about The Corporates.
B&Q made a mistake. I made a complaint. And B&Q put things right. As a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, I'm delighted to see PR working at its most effective level. I will now be banging the B&Q drum and, in doing so, do far more to improve customer relations (and my self esteem) that those low lifes who scrounge compensation from anyone human enough to make mistakes.
Long live sincerity!
