A Lesson Learned from Facebook’s Recent Press?

Posted by Leah Van Rooy, Project & Online Specialist

While Facebook is no stranger to adversity, this past week’s shake-up about privacy controls still has people talking.

After CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company came under fire for complicating the process to update user settings, Facebook quickly responded (see related Washington Post article). It revamped the entire privacy set-up by organizing all options on one page (versus several) and including a note on users’ profile pages that directed them to a privacy guide.

With many happy to see these simplified settings in place, others remain frustrated, questioning what they should share online and who really has access to it.

The concern went so far as a group organizing a ‘Commit to Quit’ Day on Monday, May 31. Last checked, nearly 35,000 users pledged to quit Facebook.

This seems like a pretty decent number, but compared to the 400 million users out there, it’s just a tiny fraction of Facebook’s current customer base.

Nevertheless, as various media channels speculate if – and how – this latest situation will affect Facebook’s overall success, we thought it brought another issue to light: the importance of addressing your customers’ concerns right away.

We all know that one person’s bad experience has a way of traveling quite a distance just by word of mouth – and social media platforms like Facebook can accelerate that even more.

If these recent Facebook headlines can teach us anything, it’s the importance of listening and responding to our customers in a timely, straightforward fashion.