A speaker shares how he handled a flood of hostile comments from FlyerTalk after a podcast mistake, then breaks down a five-step framework that stopped the negativity in minutes. He covers correcting misinformation, using the Wayback Machine to fix cached errors, and responding to complaints with humor and concrete fixes.
Chapters
I used to have a podcast back when podcasts first started. I think I was the 11th podcast in the world, and it was called the How to Do Stuff Podcast. And what I would do is I would interview people about their professions, you know, like a magician. I interviewed a magician about how to do a magic trick. And my friend Laura is an esthetician, so how do you wax your own arm, which you shouldn't do. Just leave it at that, you know. I interviewed a pilot. This is before 9/11. I interviewed a pilot on how to start a jet aircraft. Which, as it turns out, is just a button that's called start. Did you know this? I was like, there's no key or anything? It's like, as long as you can get to the cockpit. No, they just push that button. And so I had this podcast that I was gonna put out. I had developed this sort of technique. Now, bear with me on this, because you're gonna think I'm a horribly immoral person. But I had this technique back in the days when Air Canada had actual certificates for upgrading. I developed this technique, which did require a bit of lying, to get upgraded for free, even if you didn't have a certificate. Now I'm not gonna share with you the secret because we don't have time, and it doesn't work anymore anyway. They're all e-certificates, right? Look at everyone, is all depressed now again. Oh, that was looking good for a second there. So basically though, I went on my podcast, I recorded the podcast, and I put it up online, and nothing happened for about 2 weeks, 3 weeks. I got a couple of comments from the regular listeners of the podcast. They're saying, "This is funny, we were like, we liked it," you know, everything. And then all of a sudden Within an hour, I had dozens of comments. Right within a very small amount of time, and they all hated me. One of the things about these swarms of people on the internet is you can find out where they're gathering, right? You can figure out what— where— what site are you actually starting from? And if your brand gets attacked or has been, you'll know that there's a gathering point, right? And so I asked them, "Where are— where's your swarm gathering? Where is this— the source of this?" As it turns out, it was on a website called Flyertalk, which is a community of people who do a lot of flyers. Lying. And so they had this here. This is a number of years ago, obviously. This is back when I was working for the CBC. And it's Tod Maffin on scamming an upgrade. Except that's not actually what the article said. What the article really said was, the CBC's Tod Maffin on scamming an upgrade. Oh crap. And we got lots of comments. I got lots of comments, you know, Everything like this. I just emailed it to the National Post. Yikes. How you respond will set the tone in something when you've got a crisis like this, will set the tone for your ability to maintain that customer's loyalty. It is a uniquely powerful trend with all this viral stuff that's going on. So here's an example. Let's say that you're a shopping center, right? And you get this email and photo from someone who was— this is my girlfriend. I make her take pictures with me all the time. Wow, did that ever come out wrong. So let's just pretend I didn't say that. So she says, I'm a paraplegic, your elevators are always packed with people who are taking the stairs, can't you put up a sign? Maybe it says, by the way, half of the time your elevators are out of service anyway. So how do you respond as a brand like that, right? How do you maintain— maybe she started as a really loyal customer, maybe she likes the brands in your shopping center, but something like this, like the 10-mile thing with my mom, might be enough. It might be enough to turn her away and go to the mall down the street. Your ability to respond quickly, and hopefully in one message, don't get into a tit-for-tat, is going to be crucial in times like this. So the model that I developed kind of came out of this experience that I had with the podcast. And it's basically, you know, every speaker likes acronyms because it's easier for us to remember, frankly. So tone is really important, right? You've got to let them feel like they've won in some way. In my case, I pulled my podcast off my website. It's okay, it's just a podcast, who cares? Advise how you've changed. So tell them right away, this is what we're gonna do better. Don't let errors stand in Google's cache. So if this person said, you know, your elevator is broken half the time, and that's not actually true, correct the record because it will stay there. There's a website out there called Wayback Machine. Sole purpose is to catalog every web page on the internet. It's a philanthropist. There are hundreds of terabytes devoted to this. You pull it up, anything, even if you've corrected the record on another page, it has to stand there. And then make friends with them. You know, say, hey, can we— we're gonna form an advisory a jury panel of people with mobility issues. Would you like to take part in it? So a response for the shopping center might be something like this. First of all, thank you. Thank you for letting me know. I'm so sorry that that happens. I've instructed our staff to put a sign in the elevator. The sign should be in place by Friday. By the way, the elevator has been under repairs, but it shouldn't be out half the time. And finally, would you let me pick your brains? In the future about other accessibility features. This is the model that I employed without even knowing that I employed it on that podcast thing. And this, I'm not going to read it for you, but basically it was correcting the record, it was pleasant, it had some humor at the end, you know, "This is a great board and I'm looking forward to participating once this well-deserved lashing is over." And you know what happened? Right away, instantly, instantly, The negative comments stopped. I only got 4 more comments posted on that podcast post. This was them. These were them. My favorite was a person who said, "You know, all those people who are yelling at you are actually over on the Hilton board telling everyone how to scam a free gold card out of Hilton." So I thought that was kind of nice. So defense tactic 1 is about countering those reviews which are already eating away at consumer loyalty. In the full presentation, there's 5 of these tactics, really actionable, so that the next day, the people who are in your your audience members or your association or whatever could start actually using these 5 tactics. So let's move to offense.
