There are times when I use words like ameliorate because it makes me feel snarky, but there are other times when I choose my words VERY carefully because it is the only word that captures my meaning. Ameliorate was both!
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Verb
1. (transitive) To make better, to improve; to heal; to solve a problem.

They offered some compromises in an effort to ameliorate the situation.
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I never implied a best practice would be to brush it under the rug as quickly as possible. Countless times over the past few years I’ve been quoted as saying – or tweeting – “People will forgive a mistake but they will NEVER forgive a cover-up. Just ask Nixon or Clinton.” Cover-ups have always been an anathema to me. (in this instance anathema was a purely snarky word choice)

Thanks for participating and I’m glad you like the zappos example.

The real magic to what Zappos does, what Klout does and what you just did is that they take an off the shelf bad brand experience, repackage into a personalized interaction with the brand. You finding this blog post and adding your perspective to it humanizes you and Cha-Cha. That’s what creates fans instead of customers. Kudos to you.

Robbyslaughter, Patric and Amy it was fun talking with you all.

Good night,

Karl

“Ahh, shucks…” he says, blushing a bit…

Thanks again for the feedback. I’m off… the Colts are playing, then I have to work a bit… Chat with you soon, I hope!

cheers,

shawn

I like your Zappos example. I’ve always loved their attention to the customer and light speed responses. I also admire their CEO, and his Tweet’s are frequently hilarious…

Also, I agree with the speed at which a response should have been provided. My schedule has been crazy, and I got to it late. That said, we should have someone always on it.

Robby, Google Alerts isn’t exactly real-time. I got notice of this blog post at precisely 7:21PM, and responded a little more than an hour later. That said, we should be focusing more on Twitter, FB, and we should absolutely have our own feedback mechanism on our site… which is coming soon… Every company should… But, knowing about every random blog post at the moment it occurs? well, I don’t know of a real-time solution for that yet…

Patrick, YOU are spot on. My first response was worded too “corporate”. It wasn’t that I was being insincere, it was that I didn’t sound human…

Healthy discussion. Thank you…

Have a good night and thanks for letting me participate.

cheers,

shawn

I care deeply about the future of the state of Indiana and I am on ChaCha’s side. I want you to be WILDLY success and keep lots of Indiana folk working. =)

Did you ever see The Last Lecture, Shawn? One of the powerful lessons I took away from that was to be open to people giving me suggestions because if they didn’t care on some level, they wouldn’t take the time or energy to point it out. On some level you should be flattered that so many influential social media folk took the time to participate.

I appreciate you jumping into the conversation here, too. It makes me feel special!

I do enjoy our conversations…

First off, I’m a he, not a she…
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/shawn-schwegman/5/709/b24

Secondly…

I think you’re spot on in terms of how quickly companies need to react and how personal the relationship needs to feel. I also believe that it’s OK to publicly acknowledge that you have problems as long as you’re doing something about them. Too many companies get “corporate” and that’s not what’s required in today’s world. I get it. I’m sorry if my responses felt “canned”. In all honesty, that was not my intention. I also apologize that I’m just now responding to this post. (I received both from Google Alerts, but they’re not exactly real time )

I just started at ChaCha 3 months ago, and I came here because I fell in love with what our brand could be. Do we have problems? Absolutely. But, I do think it important to note that 2 Vice Presidents of a company chimed in multiple times on a blog about their quality to say, “yes, we do have problems, thank you for your feedback, and we’re on it…” I don’t know many other companies that would do that at a VP level… but, you are right in saying that that is not enough. We need full time resources constantly interacting with customers, gathering feedback, acknowledging problems, and working on solutions. We don’t have enough focus on that, and we should. Period. That’s something we will fix.

On another note, I’m not sure I agree with this statement:
“If this had been your first response, I think the situation would have been ameliorated right away and it never would have spread to twitter or any other platform.”

Regardless of the company, situation, etc., people would still have commented on the blog negatively. That’s not a bad thing. I’ve been involved in countless blogs, debates, etc over the last decade. A picture perfect response would not have ameliorated right away, nor should it. That shouldn’t be what this is about, in my ever so humble opinion…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you are right that companies should be connected to their customers, but not because you want to shut them up… It should be because you want them to voice their concerns so you can learn and make their experience better.

I’ve only been here for 3 months, but I am listening, and we are taking the necessary steps to interact with our customers faster. Hopefully, you will see our progress in the coming months…

That said, as always, I do appreciate your feedback and I am taking it to heart…

Humbly submitted,

Shawn Schwegman

@Karl I can’t remember your twitter handle off the top of my head.. is it @ktatgenhorst ? The Zappos customer service may be cliche to you, but I’ll wager a few of us could use a refresher course.

@Patric – thanks for saying I am spot on regarding this matter, I value your opinion. I am trying to remember if it was @JasonFalls or @JayBaer who had an action plan that all started with As… something like, “Acknowledge the problem, Accept blame if necessary, Apologize if necessary, Acquire information…” I think there were five As all together, and I’m a big proponent of using mnemonics to recall things, but it seems to have failed me now.

To me, it’s all in how it sounds (reads). The more corporate-like it sounds, the worse it is. I recently finished a book that summed up scenarios like this with three simple actions. Every business could learn from it:

Admit it. Fix it. And move on.