Do (successful) breweries give a damn?

Here's the thing though. It's 'in addition to' what's already a full workload. It's possible a cashier might have some downtime to monitor a feed, but it's not guaranteed, and it's not guaranteed they'll do an adequate job. Your attitude is actually a perfect example. You're one person saying "It's so easy. They should just do it!" That's how the vast majority of the world views social media, except those of us who work in it. So now, this cashier, who is taking advantage of a lull opens up the twitter feed and has 5, 10, 150 people all saying "Social media is so easy! Why is no one responding!? This brewery is full of assholes!"

Intern? Most internships are becoming a paid thing these days. Not exclusively, but it's a growing trend. But if if a brewery were to take on an unpaid intern, that intern needs a manager. That brewery needs one more person on their insurance policy. All of the small operations around me seem to be spread pretty thin - ever free labor requires resources.

Not opening an account isn't an option either, once again, because of attitudes like yours. "Social media's so easy. How can they not have an account where I can contact them and get an immediate response? If they cared about their customers, they'd be more accessible." It's also becoming less optional because of how Google ranks websites. They're putting more and more priority on a company's overall presence online, not just their website. So if a company/brewery wants to be towards the top of the search results what someone types 'local hoppy pale ale' or some such vague term because they can't remember exactly what they had last night, it'll be really helpful if the business is active on social media.

It's way more complex from a business standpoint than people realize. And because it's such a public space, it can actually be quite a bit of work for a company to respond, especially to something negative. 140 characters is not a lot of room to convey what can be a very complicated statement. If you're unhappy with something and don't have an ax to grind, send them an email. If you're unhappy and interested in publicly outing a small-medium business and potentially opening them up to great criticism and further loss, sure, take it social media.

 

As others in the industry have stated...of course we care. Without you, there is no us.

We spend an exorbitant amount of time answering questions from all corners of the social media-sphere, and try to answer each question with care. From "when is XXX beer available? to complex questions about colloidal haze in beers brewed with pilsner malt," we'll get to everything in time. If there is a question or a comment that has to do with a quality issue, I assure you, we'll be on it as soon as it is noticed. That is one topic I can 100% guarantee we're on top of. The others like the "labels and bottle caps to Russia" example that Adam from The Lost Abbey mentioned, or the "give me free beer" questions that Stephanie from Stone pointed out, may take more time (these are real things, BTW...not a day goes by without some insane request.)

That said, there are a finite amount of hours in the day, we get to what we can and we do really TRY and get back to everyone, but there are days when my email inbox clocks over 1000 emails. Seriously.

Most of the time I spend on BeerAdvocate is my personal time, but I do it because A.) I'm a beer geek and I enjoy it. B.) I think it is important for Sierra Nevada to have a voice in this crazy-headed cacophony of beer related opinion. C.) understanding the myriad perspectives of the greater beer landscape makes us better brewers.

I'll always answer a BeerMail on this site. If anyone here has a question or an issue of any sort hit me up.
If you don't want to go through BeerAdvocate, fair enough. My email address is: [email protected] or call the front desk: (530) 893-3520. They know how to find me.

Cheers!

-Bill

 

I am older so am not a huge fan of social media. I use it but see the potential problems. As a business you need to make the same determination. I agree that managing social media is a big cost to businesses. On the other hand they cannot get all the publicity and benefits of it and totally ignore the negatives. I like electricity and gas , but when the bill comes I don't say it is too expensive and not pay it. The two go together. Having easy and cheap access to the public comes with the cost of that public having easy and cheap access to you. If you are not willing to bear the cost, don't participate. If it is essential then bear the cost as a normal cost of doing business.

 

Wait a second here... On the one hand, you're basically making a case for why breweries should be utilizing social media for things as important as dealing with customer complaints and issues. But on the other, you're also suggesting that allowing "anyone"--an intern--to handle filtering legitimate complaints from frivolous ones is a good idea.

To me, those two ideas are incongruous. Either it's a vital means of one-to-one communication with a company that necessitates a full-time employee who not only has the time to spend on the various social media channels, but has the authority and good judgement to know how to handle the myriad requests that might come through said channels, or it's something that can just be handled during another employee's spare time, or by someone who might not even be paid. Obviously, larger companies will have every bit of their social media presence under strict control to avoid the risks that come with allowing your consumers an open forum on a company-endorsed website, but the vast majority of breweries are not on that scale.

If email is the modern-day equivalent to sending a written/typed letter through the mail, then social media is the equivalent to having a giant cork bulletin board where the brewery can post announcements and communications while also enabling consumers to post comments/complaints there as well. At the end of the day, letters are going to be given greater credence than some note scribbled and posted on a board that is mostly used for one-way communications to consumers. Just because it *can* be used as a two-way communication channel doesn't mean it's well-suited for that.

 

Do you really want "anyone" being a judge of what's important to your business? No, you're gonna want someone with enough overall knowledge of your business, to figure what the best response is going to be. And that person is not going to be entry level.

 

I've attempted to contact Lost Abbey directly several times about flat bottles and infections (extremely expensive bottles) and have never once gotten a response. They no longer get my money and I tell me friends and they do the same.

 

I have no idea what you do for a living, or what company you work for. But, if you work for a small(er) business (which most breweries are), and you have enough downtime to handle incoming tweets, you're probably eliminatable. In this modern world, there's not a lot of dead wood on staff at most places.

 

I think I was pretty clear in representing your opinion as such:

"But on the other, you're also suggesting that allowing "anyone"--an intern--to handle filtering legitimate complaints from frivolous ones is a good idea."

It still strikes me as a bad idea to have an employee who is basically the lowest rung on the ladder involved in any responsible capacity for that kind of thing. Even if they are only filtering, and not crafting the responses themselves. Interns can be good for a lot of things--interacting with or evaluating communication from the customer probably isn't one of them.

 

I think most of these craft brewers make the beer that they want to make and really don't care what others think, provided they can at least break even and make ends meet.

I DO think that some of the more successful craft brewers tend to develop a bit of an attitude that the industry can do without. I'm not going to name names here, but there is a certain brewer who is threatening to pull their beers out of Kentucky because they don't like the fact that growlers of their beers can sometimes be bought. I don't know exactly what they object to. Perhaps it's cleanliness, perhaps it's the people who over-purchase their beers, or perhaps they'd rather we buy their over-priced bombers. Whatever the reason, this brewer knows who they are and I have the following message for them...

If you want to leave Kentucky, then leave. Get the f**k out and don't let the door hit you in the ass as you go. You're not the only top-shelf brewer in this state (you haven't been for a long time now) and you will not be missed.

 

That's good point about it being the reality. I'm usually one of the first one's to throw their hands up and say, 'well, that's just the way it is. What are we going to do about it?' You're absolutely right that all bases should be covered. But that's not necessarily the reality for breweries and small businesses. There's also the factor of doing it versus doing it well.

As for just giving it to a cashier/intern/etc to filter, no, you certainly don't need an advanced degree to filter out legitimate inquiries. However, it does still require time, which I assume it as a premium for most breweries. And if it was my business, I'd be very wary of just giving the keys to my publicity to just anyone to use in their free time (see: doing it/doing it well). Your disclaimer idea has some merit, but that kind of flies in the face of what social media is supposed to be. However, if a company in any industry were to open accounts they couldn't manager, that's probably the best solution.

As was pointed out earlier, a Facebook message is functionally similar to an email message, however if a message gets read once, the notification is gone. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but if someone is just squeezing it in, those notifications are mighty useful.

Perhaps it's the nature of the industry in which I work, but social media can be a very tricky thing. Confidentiality, co-marketing agreements (or lack thereof), publication timelines, copyright issues - I have a lot of considerations to keep track of in addition to the rest of my workload.

 

Successful breweries are not a monolith. Some are good at customer service, some are so so, some are poor and some really don't give a damn. There's only one brewery I've had a bad experience with, and oddly enough they were a 2-3 tier San Diego brewery, not even close to a giant fish in that pond. I've had great experiences with the customer service at Lagunitas, Stone and Russian River. All of the preceding are big enough they could have told me to go pound sand, but they didn't.

 

How do you cover your bases when social media can be an infinite amount of bases? That is the heart of the issue - a brewery(a company) only has so much time and money to spend doing activities. Personally I think responding to a perponderance of social media comments isn't of best value to the customer. Of course, said brewery could charge more for their beer to cover a larger staff. Would that make people happy?

 

I guess I don't see this response as much better than none at all. Not to mention the fact that it's not really something that can be done in someone's downtime. A task that is allocated to being done during downtime is a non-vital task; it's saying that in the absence of downtime, that task can be overlooked. And really, that's all that companies who don't have a dedicated social media person to respond to customer complaints is saying--that the task is non-vital.

Working in advertising, for an agency that has a social media group, the thing that I see most often with our clients--and one of the primary reasons that they hire us in the first place--is that people tend to have an attitude that social media is easy to do. But most times, that attitude comes from a place of not realizing the nuances of it; being easy to use isn't the same as being easy to use effectively. That's really one of the biggest pitfalls of social media: it seems so easy to use, but carries with it a great deal of risk when used incorrectly.

I'm honestly a little surprised to see someone who works in social media to express that attitude. It's not often you see someone who does X for a living saying how easy X is to do. The associates I work with in social media are good at their jobs because they understand that running social media for a business is vastly different than using it as an individual. I think you might be selling the skills and abilities you must possess to do your job a bit short.

Except that it must be done through Facebook, and not through the channel where all other essential business communications come through. And it must take place in a tiny little text box window, where it's more difficult to compose long responses and be able to view the message to which you are responding while crafting the response. It works, but it's not ideal, which is compounded by the fact that you're trying to do it during downtime. You can pound a nail with a rock, but a hammer is a hell of a lot more effective.

I suppose a disclaimer works, but it's similar, in my mind, to the "please email/call us at ______" response. It's canned and basically renders the whole point of social media moot.

But what value is your respect next to the value of the additional marketing reach provided by social media? You're asking a company to completely abandon a valuable marketing channel (several channels, actually) because of how you feel they should be using it. Ironically, one of the benefits of social media is the flexibility with which it can be used, and while I agree that *some* kind of response is preferable (even a "please call/email us"), I'm just not sure that's realistic.

If email wasn't so prevalent and nearly as easy to use as social media, I might align more closely with your thoughts here. But to echo a sentiment expressed earlier in this thread--any customer who is serious about a complaint or piece of feedback they want to provide the brewery should take the time to sit down and compose a professional email, and anyone who doesn't do that should understand that they are taking the risk of 1) not being seen, or 2) not being taken seriously.

 

Amen, dude. I wish I could go through and 'Like' each section. But since I can't, this is the big one.

No, it's not rocket science. In fact, it's where humanity reaches the extremes of banality. However, to do it well, it takes a lot more than just a smartphone and a birthday after 1980.

 

My God, I think I teared up a little reading that. I need that "standing and clapping" GIF........

 

Wondering if they care and wondering why you didn't get a response are two different things, my friend. Those breweries got your message but they chose not to respond to it because its one of many, they may get a lot of those along with good, bad and indifferent messages all muddled up into one inbox, which piles up daily. Everyone seems to think the entire world revolves around them, that is our ego. In reality, you can control the moment, whats in front of you by making the appropriate decisions, some days are really good and go your way, you know? Feeling poor after not receiving a response from a major company who is brewing you beer on a 24 hour schedule is an inappropriate decision. Relax, they appreciate you telling them when a beer is infected but they also get annoying responses from annoying customers all the time.