Argos customer service win. How it could have gone wrong…

March 13, 2014

So, I am sure over the past few days you have seen the Argos  “badman” tweets doing the rounds as examples of great social customer service. For those of you who haven’t seen the posts, here is the story…

Bugti wants to know about when new PS4 stock arrives in the Moss Side branch, it has taken too long. Added to that he was annoyed about the member of staff in branch who had a bad attitude.

Cue the response that got everyone talking by Argos. Credit to them for humanising and injecting some light-heartedness into dealing with customers. There is also the potential that, like this post, these unique responses get picked up in social media and get positive press…

BUT IT COULD HAVE GONE WRONG…

There is fine line at the front line of social customer service. Comments can made over the phone by call centre staff but there is no where to hide in social media. Equally, there is no real right or wrong way to respond which makes it incredibly difficult to judge a situation. The tweet from @argoshelpers could have equally been portrayed as sarcastic, mocking or rude and could have got the back up on an already frustrated customer…

Thankfully for Argos and the customer service team, it didn’t…

Long live humanising the approach I say, but as brands continue to push the boundaries there will be more and more of these types of stories to debate… so let’s do just that…

Tweet us: win or lose #argoshelpersfineline or drop a comment below…   

Source: Original Tweets from Twitter. Mocked post created using https://lemmetweetthatforyou.com/t/8bwjxc

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