Last Tuesday, May 19th I wrote about a bad experience I had with American Express customer service that resulted in having my card cancelled after 27 years. If you missed it you can read it here.
Last Friday, May 22th, 3 days after my post, I got a call from Ms. McGovern from the Executive Offices of American Express. She explained to me that members of American Express’s Marketing Department monitor Blogs and other social media products for mentions of the “American Express” brand. My blog entry caught their eye, so they forwarded my blog posting to the American Express Executive Offices where they review their customer service processes on a case-by-case basis. Ms. McGovern said (I’m going to paraphrase), “After reading your blog entry and looking at the facts, I must agree with your assessment.” She restored my American Express card and removed the negative comments on my credit report.
We had a nice chat, late Friday night, 2 hours after their offices were closed. She was working late and made an effort to call me when she could have just gone home to start enjoying her Memorial day weekend. She was pleasant, professional and candid about the situation. In short, she restored my faith in American Express and more importantly, she demonstrated superb customer service skills by simply being honest with me. It wasn’t their best and they should have been more flexible, in my specific case.
To be fair, we should have never used any American Express card (cancelled or otherwise) to test our merchant gateway. That was our bad and we should also take responsibility for causing this situation in the first place. We’ve learned and changed our testing processes to always make sure we get the test credit card numbers from our merchant partners.
Lets take a closer look at how American Express is working to maintain their brand.
As a turnaround CEO, I can’t miss an opportunity to learn from American Express. Their Marketing Department moved quickly to alert their Executive Offices to pull my account up and look at it more closely. I think we have to give American Express a lot of credit for: #1 Having a department to review complaints about customer service and, #2 Giving the responsibility to the Marketing Department to protect their brand image.
I should point out that my blog is new. The American Express post was my 2nd posting. It has only been visited 88 times. It isn’t as if my post was going to cause a huge backlash to them.
Looking at my web log stats a little closer reveal something even more impressive. My blog was posted on May 19th at 12:22pm Pacific. With the blog post was also a Tweet on my Twitter account a few minutes later. American Express, Phoenix, AZ visited my blog at 2:26pm. 2 hours and 4 minutes after I published my blog entry someone from American Express spent 3 minutes reading my blog post. Over the next 24 hours, American Express visited my blog 4 more times. One hit was from American Express – United Kingdom.
How did they do it? There are several tools that companies can use to monitor their brand. Twitter Search allows you to perform a manual search. Applications like TweakDeck allow you to monitor search phrases is real time. Twitter also allows you to use the TRACK command from your phone if you have it configured.
My blog entry did make it into Google’s index very quickly. I suspect it’s because:
- I blogged, then posted a comment in Twitter with a link to the blog.
- Tagged my Facebook wall with my blog post.
- 6 people ReTweet my message and link
Googlebot moved quickly. Still, my guess is AmEx is monitoring the phrase “American Express” in either Twitter and/or Facebook.
Next, American Express had processes in place to have my blog entry reviewed and empowered employees like Ms. McGovern to overturn a decision. They understand the importance of moving quickly and had a sense of urgency to act. Finally, management isn’t afraid to tackle this challenge. It’s so easy to just say we can’t possibly look at every Tweet with the word “American Express” considering Twitter is averaging 8 – 9 million Tweets a day. They built strong processes to protect their brand and I’m proof they’re executing flawlessly.
This all resulted in American Express being nimble, with the ability to provide exceptional customer service. Anyone who has invested in building a brand should learn from American Express.
Does GM or Ford monitor what people are saying about their brand? Do Senators and Congressmen? Does the IRS, FBI, DEA, SEC? Does your company?
This kind of initiative needs to be championed from the top. CEO, CIO, CCO (Chief Customer Officers) must lead from the front when it comes to communicating the vision. In this case, I tip my hat to Mr. Kenneth Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express. I would also like to congratulate Mr. John D. Hayes, Executive Vice President Global Advertising and Brand Management and Chief Marketing Officer for setting the example on how companies should monitor social media outlets to protect their brand.
I’m looking forward to another 27 years with American Express.
…Jim
posted @ Tuesday, May 26, 2009 10:02 AM