Bad hummus + Twitter = Free lunch

Leon, the chain of rather charming fast food eateries serving up tasty things for Londoners’ lunches has a branch at the Bluefin Building not more than 5 minutes walk from RMM towers. Naturally I frequent it on a semi-regular basis (heck, that’s a lie, we have their menu pinned up on our notice board…). Anyhoo, my eating habits aside, this Monday I headed over for a tub of hummus and a box of their chilli con carne (new to the menu, I believe) and was a wee bit underwhelmed with it. I tweeted my dislpleasure and, well, see for yourself what happened…

Yup, Leon are in on the act; using Twitter as a customer service channel: checking the twit-waves (like airwaves) and jumping in to mitigate negative buzz with offers of free grub. This is just the kind of sensible implementation of Twitter in to a brand’s social media framework that we advocate here at RMM: listen to what your audience are saying about you and where relevant respond. It’s simple, honest, good buzz management. @wahaca is another stellar example of a London eatery listening and responding well.

HOWEVER, however, @Henry_Leon isn’t some poor social media schmuck in a back room somewhere fielding endless tweets. Goodness no, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Leon. How do you like them apples?! Yes, the boss is leading from the front and actively listening to what people are saying about his brand and responding to his company’s audience. In fact, he’s even written about his approach to customer service in The Guardian. If only more CEO’s were like Henry…

Now, my one concern with all of this, on a larger scale, is that as punters get wise to such genuine attempts by brands to engage with their audience, trying to improve their relationship with the brand, they will start trying to game the system. That is to say, people will tweet saying “I ate at [say] Leon yesterday and it tasted like feet and tractor tyres” without having found the food to even remotely resemble feet or tractor tyres and yet they tweet anyway on the off chance the brand is listening and they get ‘free stuff’ out of it.

Pretty soon, wise reader, you can see a world in which brands have to stop such activites as the kind offer Leon extended to me as they won’t be able to tell the genuine complaints from the cheeky sods trying to game the system. OR, or, dear reader, brands might become somewhat elitist, only offering free lunches (so to speak) to those people with follower numbers big enough to make their olive branch worthwhile (whatever that might mean) and thus overlook the little guy.

Either way, I just hope we don’t see either of these scenarios play out as I have suggested and that such acts as @Henry_Leon’s offer to buy me lunch to apologise for a poor experience remain genuine, honest and simple.

(…and if I find out any of you have been gaming the system I will personally come round to your house and feed your dog to a wood chipper)