The inferred power of Twitter!

I'm in Chicago visiting with clients today and tomorrow. After catching the 7:00 AM flight this morning from BWI and a day full of meetings, I was happy to catch dinner and spend some time with my good friend, Dean West, President of Association Labs and one of his associates.

We finished our dinner and began to consume "adult beverages" as we spoke about the days events and philosphized on the association marketplace.

Our waiter, in a hurry to clean our table, spilled an entire glass of red wine on Dean. Simply knocked it over. Now, the wine was Dean's associates, not Dean's. As the waiter went away and quickly returned with a cup of hot water (and I think lemmon), we kidded him saying that "...everything would be ok as long as Dean gets another drink."

The waiter offered "free dry cleaning" and implyed that he couldn't offer a free drink. In fact, he suggested that he should replace his associate's glass of wine as he was 'the damaged party.' Dean immediately produced his i-phone and told the waiter that he was about to be put on Twitter.

Truth of the matter...he never hit record.

Low and behold, Dean received a drink...but no dry cleaning. Oh well, we considered it a win anyway.

Interesting that the threat of social media was necessary to produce what we all (hopefully) would assume to be a natural customer service response.

So the question is, when your members call about a problem or a concern, is your staff solving their problem or do they wish they could pull out their i-phones?

Let me know what you think of this post. 

Experts in Membership Marketing is produced by Erik D Schonher, Vice President for Marketing General Incorporated.