Competitive use of social media

Competition, survival of the fittest, that’s the essence of business. It inevitably spreads to everything that is associated with business, and with social media being new, it’s about to start appearing there. I would love to see that happen and you should be excited too. Imagine a world where your complaints that are made in the “privacy” of your phone are heard and answered. Imagine writing a quick restaurant review and being invited to a competitor down the street to dine for half-price.
There is an abundance of advocates of social media in business and they are a resilient bunch. As an example,  a few months back I was expecting a delivery from Purolator during the Canada Post strike and I needed to contact customer service. I was dreading the call to the service centre and having to deal with the automated machine and waiting on hold. On their website I have noticed the option to contact their customer service on twitter and I tried it. It was pretty great, I got the answer that I was looking for without using the phone. Here’s the transcript of the interaction  
          

                safinr: @purolatorhelp Can you please tell me where is Toronto (North) depot located?  
                PurolatorHelp: @safinr This is Vincent. To avoid making a mistake, can you email me your tracking number and I will verify? customer.care@purolator.com          
               safinr:  @PurolatorHelp Hey Vincent, it's been awhile what's the status on the Toronto North Location?  I received the needed response shortly after.

Customer service is awesome, but marketing is another area that is great with social media. One of the ways that you can use it competitively is by contacting the dissatisfied customers of the competing business. For example, if you are Second Cup, and you want to offer product to the angry Starbucks customers. What you do is jump on twitter search (I recommend using Hootsuite.com) and look for someone mentioning Starbucks and one other word (damn, messed up, ruined, pissed of, fuck). There’s a good chance that someone will post this disgruntled tweet right after negative experience happened so emotional words are very likely don’t be afraid to search for it.
Here’s an screenshot of the search that I did.

Take a look at the tweet circled in blue, she seems like a great candidate for a competitive marketing campaign. Why not contact her and give her a free drink coupon to Second Cup? She might end up switching to Second Cup for coffee, or will tweet about this positive experience, or will come to Second Cup with other paying customers.

Now take a look at the tweet circled in red, she is talking about intention to switch, why not give her an extra incentive to switch to Second Cup instead? Send her free coffee too, and good things will happen.

I personally don’t have a preference for any coffee dealer, mainly because I make a mean coffee at home.

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