Maybe it was just a coincidence, but two insightful marketing object lessons popped up this week.

The subject matter in common was customer service via social media, but in these two stories the outcomes were different. Both illustrations—one good and one not—are pages from big business, and they hold excellent take-away lessons for hospital and healthcare marketing.

The first mini-drama is a British Airways blunder last Fall, recounted in a Wall Street Journal blog post by Ryan Holmes. He wrote:

“Several pieces of luggage were lost on a Chicago-Paris flight, hardly an unusual occurrence. But when reaching out for help via formal customer service channels got no results, disgruntled businessman Hasan Syed turned to Twitter.

“Syed paid an estimated $1,000 to send a promoted tweet. His message was brutally direct: “Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.” As a promoted tweet, his warning was blasted out not only to his followers but to thousands of other users on the network—an audience that can be strategically targeted by geography, keywords, interests and even gender.

“Incredibly, it took British Airways more than 10 hours to notice and address the complaint. By that time, it had been retweeted thousands of times and picked up by popular tech news websites. After just a few days, several thousand Twitter users saw Syed’s rant and stories on it ran everywhere from the BBC to Fox News.” [See Business Insider.]

And (just by coincidence), KLM Royal Dutch Airlines published a notice reminding previous passengers of their “24/7 Social Media Servicing.” Their broadcast email read in part:

“A very Happy New Year or ‘Gelukkig Nieuwjaar’ as the Dutch say!

 “Did you know that for any service related question you can reach us 24/7 in 10 languages on Facebook, Twitter and soon on Google+ as well? If you ask your question via Facebook or Twitter, our goal is to respond within one hour. On the klm.us customer support page, you can now see a live response time to know exactly when to expect your answer.”

Read more: http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/internet-marketing-advertising/social-media-patient-rants-defense-lessons-from-big-biz.html

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