Introduction
Social media today has significantly changed the way business organisations operate by being a
double-edged sword - organisations either benefit greatly or suffer greatly from it. In this report, we
will analyse three organisations, Blackberry, Zappos and NASA , on the basis of their usage of social
media, and also the impact of social media on their respective business, reputation or crisis
management efforts. We will also compare and contrast their efforts.
Blackberry
Blackberry has utilised social media in many ways. First, Blackberry has a Facebook page to keep loyal
customers updated about their latest business issues, and gives potential customers who may
consider buying their product the relevant information about the products. Blackberry also has a
Twitter account, to keep customers updated, and an official YouTube channel to advertise the
uniqueness of their company.
Recently on 10 October 2011, Blackberry experienced a technical disruption. Users of Blackberry in
Europe noticed that email services were down in Europe initially, but it soon became a worldwide
phenomena. The service was down for more than 12 hours and users complained and demanded
explanations using Twitter for the cause of the breakdown. However, there was near silence from
Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphone. It finally posted its first response on
one of its Twitter accounts @BlackBerryHelp (Refer to Appendix) .
Without giving any details of the breakdown or the estimated time of resolution, users were baffled,
especially so when RIM did not give any further response after its first post. Besides @BlackBerryHelp,
Blackberry had several other Twitter accounts, but none responded. The service updates took a
staggering 12 hours, leaving angry and helpless users of BlackBerry no clue on the estimated time of
resolution.
Impact of social media on business and reputation of Blackberry
Due to this unexpected interruption, Blackberry’s businesses suffered a substantial amount of loss of
$485 million, a sharp drop in its share price, and forfeited 1.2 million customers in the US within one
month from this social media blunder. In addition, Blackberry’s reputation plummeted, with surveys
showing that every one out of five customers residing in UK are contemplating the idea of switching
smartphone brands, away from Blackberry. Blackberry’s overall value fell by approximately 50%.
After this disastrous incident to Blackberry, RIM has not done much to improve its crisis management
efforts. Currently, RIM has been upgrading its products in order to win back the loyalty of their past
customers, instead of trying to improve on their customer service on the social media platform.
Zappos
Zappos uses a variety of social media platforms to interact with their customers and enhance
customers services. This includes the use of Twitter (@Zappos_Service), YouTube, Facebook , LinkedIn
and blogs.
Zappos uses Twitter to improve connectivity with its customers. Zappos focused on providing quality
service through its @Zappos_service Twitter account to answer customers’ problems, queries and to
shorten the time lag of customers considering to buy Zappos product and actually buying the product.
The team also has an actual online conversation with the customers. This is key to building customer
relationship with the brand. In addition, Zappos launched the Zappos TweetWall, which allows its
followers to see what Zappos products are popular in the Twitter community currently.
In addition to posting updates about their business, Zappos also hold contest on Facebook, such as a
contest to create the perfect look using their clothes and accessories whereby the winner can get the
entire look for free or win special items, and the “Fan of the Week” contest whereby fans send in
their photos with the Zappos box and the winner will have his photos publicised on Zappos’s
Facebook page. In addition, consumers can directly purchase at Zappos official site by clicking on “buy
now” buttons on Facebook.
Impact of social media on Zappos
Zappos has largely benefited from the use of social media in its business model. When customers
receive quality service from Zappos service team, it will enhance their consumer experience and
hence, expand the loyal customer base. Also, with more views on Zappos TweetWall, there will be
more conversations about their products. Customers can be influenced and also discover new
products to their liking through other users’ recommendations on TweetWall. Zappos can also secure
their Facebook customers through direct links to its official site. By spreading the word of popular
Zappos products over social networking sites, it capitalises on a larger global network, expanding
customer base.
NASA
Recently, NASA used social media very effectively to make 2 events - the retirement of the Endeavour
space shuttle as well as the Mars Rover Curiosity’s landing a major success.
The newly retired Endeavour space shuttle had its multi-day retirement flight to Los Angeles. The
flight could have been met with public apathy as did the shuttle’s recent flights to space. However
with effective social media usage, NASA turned it into a huge event. They created the Twitter hashtag
#spottheshuttle and encouraged people who spotted the shuttle on its final flight to tweet it. They
also organized social media fans to a “social meetup” to enjoy a more immersive experience of the
Shuttle’s last flight - they got to view the landing of the shuttle whilst being piggybacked on a Shuttle
Carrier Aircraft and tour the Support Aircraft.
NASA also leveraged the power of social media to generate excitement about the Mars Rover
Curiosity. The Rover has it’s own Twitter account that has gathered more than 1.2 million Followers
who love Curiosity “tweets” as her Tweets are full of and personality. Also, Curiosity was the first user
to ever check in on Mars at the social site Foursquare - this novelty garnered it much attention.
Impact of social media on NASA
NASA’s social media efforts have benefited both its reputation as well as financial health. Their actions
on social media has enhanced its reputation among the younger generation who for many years
never had the same perception of NASA as did the generation who lived through the Space Wars.
Financially, President Obama gave his personal commitment to the Curiosity team that he will protect
critical investments in science and technology. Furthermore, through the phenomenon of
“Crowdsourcing”, NASA is able to raise funds from ordinary people.
Comparison between companies
Social media has multitudinous impacts on differing companies, depending on how well companies
utilise it. Blackberry, Zappos and NASA has utilised social media in different ways. Both Zappos and
NASA have successfully leveraged on the power of social media, while Blackberry has unfortunately
failed to do so. The success of Zappos and NASA in their use of social media is largely due to the fast
response that the team gave to their customers. The use of @Zappos_Service to reply customers’
queries almost instantaneously has helped Zappos earn more loyal customers. Furthermore, NASA’s
proactive stance towards social media has greatly boosted its image of people from around the world.
On the other hand, the response given by Blackberry during the crisis made social media act against
the interests of the company. Blackberry users were using the social media to voice their discontent
with the company – and this created even more discontent among the users as it spread around the
Internet. Also, it appears that BlackBerry did not learn its lesson on not managing social media
properly - they aim to improve only their product quality while other successful companies like
Zappos are also focusing on improving customer service by engaging them through social media.
Recommendations
There are several key learning points that we can derive from the three business organisations
mentioned above. In the event of a technical glitch, business organisations should inform its
customers immediately, apologising whilst explaining the problem, instead of leaving helpless
customers in suspense. Other than informing the customers, organisations also have to keep their
employees updated on the organization's’ current situation. Organisations should also give notices to
the customers about the approximate time needed to solve the problem. Lastly, instead of developing
new technology, Blackberry should place more emphasis on improving their customer service and
crisis management efforts.
Summary
Our group believes that organizations have to proactively manage social media to reach
organizational objectives such as NASA and Zappos – if they don’t, their brand would be left to the
users of social media where small disasters can be magnified such as in the case of BlackBerry.
Appendix
Blackberry’s first response to the service breakdown.
Example of Curiousity’s Personality-laden Tweets.
Links
http://www.citeworld.com/social/20611/successful-enterprise-social-network-needs-be-steeped-
corporate-culture
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2012/09/21/how-nasa-used-social-media-to-make-mars-curiosity-and-
endeavor-major-events/
https://twitter.com/nasa
https://dev.twitter.com/case-studies/zappos-uses-twitter-generate-over-1200-conversations-month-
its-customers