Why Hootsuite Understands Loyalty

Danny - I'm "newer" to Twitter. My friend Marlee Ward does her best to keep me up to date and functioning "right" with my growing social networking endeavors and she makes sure that my use of platforms like Twitter and applications like Hootsuite are optimized.

At first she had me using TweetDeck (I think that's what it's called) and has recently told me that I MUST use hootsuite. Well, I hadn't spent much time on it, but after reading this article, I'm sold.

I know that was a lot of words for so little to say. I'm a little crazy from time to time Danny! Cheers mate!

Hello Danny,

Now that the dust is settling a wee bit, I wanted to let you know how much we enjoyed seeing your post and the thoughtful comments from your readers.

While this incident was unexpected, we reacted quickly and treated our customers the same way we'd like to be treated – kindly and openly. Our diligent engineers worked tirelessly to restore service since we know how important our dashboard is for users all around the world.

Additionally, we managed to stay very close to our rapid release schedule with a complete Spanish localization, new .Li URL shortener (both complete with infographics), plus Dutch and Portuguese mobile versions tomorrow... and another big announcement next week - whew.

Your kind words and good humour was a true treat amidst the hectic times and helped us know that we were doing the right thing.

Finally, we'd be pleased to send you a "Hootkit" of Owl stickers and other fun treats. Just send your postal address by email and we'll set you up.

Thanks again from the owls in Vancouver,

@daveohoots

Danny,

It is nice of you to acknowledge Hootsuite's good customer relations. Few people take the time to mention when things are done well. We all love to complain when things go bad, but few take the time to give compliments for good things.

Yay for Hootsuite. I use it myself. But this goes to the heart of consumer products and businesses in general. Everyone must look at what happen with a failure. If it causes major loss of revenue or someone getting sick hurt or dying there must be a plan in place to handle such an occurrence.

In Hootsuite and Livefyre's situation you bet they will be working on some server redundancy either internally or with a second vendor. For Amazon now they have clients wonering if they are safe if they are their sole hosting/server provider.

I heard Bonsai has a server farm and uses excess capacity from the Canadian Government and Molson Breweries.

So ofter, as marketers we focus on the big picture and daily tactics. Real marketing counts at moments like these, HootSuite recognizes that and seized an excellent opportunity to showcase one of the many reasons they are successful.

Great post Danny!

I love this.
It wasn't their fault but if we look for excuses in life, its never really our fault right?
We can always tell a client, a vendor didn't deliver, Fedex was late, there was an accident on the 401, we had a power outage...

Hootsuite is a leader in their category because they take ownership for the BAD, not just the good. And they do something about it.

Yep got your letter and they just made a loyal fan out of me.

Nice job by Hootsuite. I'm a user of the platform, although not a premium user. When they were down last week I found myself going to Seesmic and using their Web platform...and I didn't like it. I used it until Hootsuite came back online...but wasn't happy with the 'experience' of Seesmic's web tool. I'm back to Hootsuite now and very happy.

That said...I have to argue a bit with something you said. You say 'it wasn't Hootsuite's fault' that they were down. I disagree....and I think the folks at Hootsuite would disagree too.

It was their fault for not planning for an outage. You can't build your business on 'the cloud' and not expect an outage....you've got to have some form of a failover plan in place for these black swan events.

Easier said then done but it has to be done....and I'm sure Hootsuite is doing it now to prepare for this next outage.

Hey Danny,

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, my inbox is so bloated that right now I am ignoring auto emails and only searching for ones from real people.

I love Hootsuite. Their interface is great and I get many of my social profiles all in one place. They do need some work on their mobile app, it always deletes my streams. Whatever, I'm sure they will get to it. It's free and I rarely use my iPhone for tweeting.

I found so many people complaining on FB about the outage. They need to get over it. Just go to Twitter and post, duh! I can see premium members getting angry but I'm sure many were free subscribers.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up.

~Allie

Hi Danny,
Whenever any business treats my like that, they will have made a friend (meaning that I will chat them up to all my friends) and a customer for life.
Riley

Danny - I'm "newer" to Twitter. My friend Marlee Ward does her best to keep me up to date and functioning "right" with my growing social networking endeavors and she makes sure that my use of platforms like Twitter and applications like Hootsuite are optimized.

At first she had me using TweetDeck (I think that's what it's called) and has recently told me that I MUST use hootsuite. Well, I hadn't spent much time on it, but after reading this article, I'm sold.

I know that was a lot of words for so little to say. I'm a little crazy from time to time Danny! Cheers mate!

Hello Danny,

Now that the dust is settling a wee bit, I wanted to let you know how much we enjoyed seeing your post and the thoughtful comments from your readers.

While this incident was unexpected, we reacted quickly and treated our customers the same way we'd like to be treated – kindly and openly. Our diligent engineers worked tirelessly to restore service since we know how important our dashboard is for users all around the world.

Additionally, we managed to stay very close to our rapid release schedule with a complete Spanish localization, new .Li URL shortener (both complete with infographics), plus Dutch and Portuguese mobile versions tomorrow... and another big announcement next week - whew.

Your kind words and good humour was a true treat amidst the hectic times and helped us know that we were doing the right thing.

Finally, we'd be pleased to send you a "Hootkit" of Owl stickers and other fun treats. Just send your postal address by email and we'll set you up.

Thanks again from the owls in Vancouver,

@daveohoots

Hey Danny,

I was very impressed with the letter also. What I liked about it, besides just being a classy move, was it was incredibly proactive. Sure, Hootsuite was reacting to an outage; but they were attempting to get ahead of the reaction from their customers. Smart business and great customer service!

I’m glad you wrote this post. Complaints tend to dominate online (everywhere, really), so it is always nice to see someone take the time to share a positive customer service experience.

Danny,

It is nice of you to acknowledge Hootsuite's good customer relations. Few people take the time to mention when things are done well. We all love to complain when things go bad, but few take the time to give compliments for good things.

Hi Danny, I have to say I never saw this message even though I've been a Hootsuite user for some time now.

It's definitely refreshing to see them take responsibility for something that was outwith their control. Unfortunately many companies over here don't take responsibility for thing that are obviously their fault!

This is a text book example of customer service done right. The took a bad situation (that wasn't even their fault, really) and turned it into good PR with nothing more than a sincere blog post and some free credits. Clearly someone at Hootsuite is on the ball when it comes to public relation and customer perception.

Yay for Hootsuite. I use it myself. But this goes to the heart of consumer products and businesses in general. Everyone must look at what happen with a failure. If it causes major loss of revenue or someone getting sick hurt or dying there must be a plan in place to handle such an occurrence.

In Hootsuite and Livefyre's situation you bet they will be working on some server redundancy either internally or with a second vendor. For Amazon now they have clients wonering if they are safe if they are their sole hosting/server provider.

I heard Bonsai has a server farm and uses excess capacity from the Canadian Government and Molson Breweries.

You see, this is how you get focus onto you: take the rap for something that wasn't your fault, and offer a solution when you don't have to.

When there's a problem, people want solutions, FAST, and Hootsuite stepped in and provided what the people want. As a result, they get brownie points and a post dedicated to them by Danny Brown. Win all round ;-)

Lovely gesture alright. No different to being in a bar and having your drink spilt and the bar replacing it. Oldest trick in the book but one that people remember

I was very impressed by the fact that they took ownership of a problem that they couldn't be blamed for and made amends to their customers. I have always been a huge fan of HootSuite, and this just further confirms they are the right way to go for my needs!

So ofter, as marketers we focus on the big picture and daily tactics. Real marketing counts at moments like these, HootSuite recognizes that and seized an excellent opportunity to showcase one of the many reasons they are successful.

Great post Danny!

I was wondering if someone was going to write about this. I thought it was terrific of Hootsuite, as well. They realized how much their customers rely on them and how much that downtime affected their customers' ability to do their own work. It wasn't their fault, but they did what they could to make it right. Even though it's costing them actual $'s.

We talk a lot about the power of social media to help brands earn our trust, but good customer service can be even more powerful.

Danny: Bravo for Ryan and his team of folks at Hootsuite. I dont think I can say the same for the team at Amazon. I am an EC2 customer and saw the cryptic notes from them. The beauty about these new services like Hootsuite,Quora,Foursquare is that they can ramp up quickly due to the scalability on the Amazon platform thus lowering their initial cash investment and getting to market faster. I wonder if Mr Bezos and his wise team in Seattle should be listening hear. Hopefully they are using Hootsuite.

Hi Danny,

I'm not a Pro user, but I saw this letter when I logged in to HootSuite for the first time after the outage. I was so impressed that I decided to upgrade.

Like HootSuite, companies should treat each customer like they would their most important, most profitable customers. I'm so used to poor or mediocre treatment, that when a company does something exceptional like this, my price sensitivity diminishes. Powerful. Well done, HootSuite.

-Marianne

I love this.
It wasn't their fault but if we look for excuses in life, its never really our fault right?
We can always tell a client, a vendor didn't deliver, Fedex was late, there was an accident on the 401, we had a power outage...

Hootsuite is a leader in their category because they take ownership for the BAD, not just the good. And they do something about it.

Yep got your letter and they just made a loyal fan out of me.