It seems the tides might be turning and it could actually be good for businesses to name, shame and embarrass keyboard warriors, especially if they are trying to blag something for free.

Big organisations go to great lengths to make sure their social media delivers results and, most importantly, doesn’t offend or outrage people.

Staff are regularly briefed and trained about how to use social media to make sure everything stays on brand. Bring rude, flippant or insulting to customers are definite no-nos and staff must even be careful with their own personal accounts so that nothing they post could make their employer look bad.

Social media is also where people go for recommendations as well as finding out what to avoid – and people are only too happy to let you know if they have had a bad experience.

Companies try to do their best to appease unhappy customers and take any heat out of a complaint. Mistakes happen and it is how a business deals with it that matters.

Some people take great pleasure posting complaints and critical views for the world to see. Even with a genuine gripe, the best approach is to contact the company directly and let them put things right. If that doesn’t get you anywhere, perhaps a public rant might help get the result you want.

But it is all too common for people to get worked up about nothing or exaggerate a complaint so they can take great pleasure in concocting clever put-downs in their posts.

The advice used to be to turn the other cheek, but now, the best approach might be to stick two fingers up and tell them where to go. Chances are, most of the other people reading the exchange will feel the same.

This is exactly what some of the biggest companies have done recently – and I think it’s great. 

Why should they be held to reputational ransom over inflated complaints from people who say their lives have been ruined because the supermarket delivered the wrong size bottle of milk, or that they’re traumatised by being given two packs of 10 of something, instead of one pack of 20?

If you’ve ordered cheese and are sent fish as a substitute, there are definitely grounds for complaint – to the store, not the internet – but if you have got what you wanted and paid for, albeit slightly differently, so what?

In an article in the Daily Mail, one woman tweeted Tesco Mobile complaining that she couldn’t get through to her friend: “When you call someone and it goes to their Tesco Mobile voicemail . . . LOOOOOOOOOOOOL.” Tesco Mobile tweeted back: “When you realise your mates are ignoring you LOOOOOOOOL #nojoke."

Tesco’s response was liked almost 8,000 times and retweeted more than 11,000 times. What did she expect . . . Tesco to get hold of her friend for her, or was she hoping for a free upgrade?

Another one that made me laugh was Leeds United trying to put the boot into Pizza Hut, saying: “Prefer Domino’s thanks! They don’t take a week to deliver a tweet.” 

The restaurant chain kicked back in a no-nonsense Yorkshire fashion that would make Norman Hunter proud: “Bit rich coming from a club that hasn’t delivered since 1992 …”

Royal Mail was in equally mischievous mood when a man tweeted: “I’d like to make a complaint about my Valentine’s cards. Still haven’t arrived,” to which, the mail giant replied: “Sorry to hear that, when exactly did your mum post them and what service was used?”

It’s fair to say the companies in these examples said what most people were thinking. Only large organisations that can afford to lose a few customers can get away with this sort of response, but just sometimes, wouldn’t it be great to tell some people how you really feel?

Before the internet, in the days when you had to pick up a phone and actually talk to people, I worked with someone who used to deal with these “lunatics, absolute lunatics” as he would mutter, by putting his phone in the top drawer while they ranted away. At regularly increasing intervals, he used to open the drawer and ask if they were still there . . . one minute . . . three minutes . . . five minutes . . . 10 minutes . . . 

While it’s not an exact science and the Guinness Book of Records might pull a face, the record was longer than 10 minutes but less than 20.

Fast forward 25 years and my colleague, who is very sadly no longer with us, would have loved to be let loose on the company’s social media, telling these lunatics to bugger off.

This one’s for you, John.

#customerservice #keyboardwarriors #socialmedia #pr #publicrelations