How Ooma could have used their global outage to their advantage

A phone service having a total outage of service is bad enough, but it doesn’t stop there. They also had their website go down as well as their customer service line. So, essentially a communications company had no way for customers to communicate with them.

The real problem is that they do, in fact, have ways to communicate with their customres (twitter, facebook) but chose not to use them. That didn’t go unnoticed.

Companies still failing at social media

It seems that there is no shortage of stories about companies failing to properly communicate with their customers. What’s baffling is that communication is SO easy these days that it doesn’t make sense to ignore the opportunities. It’s like they don’t realize that they can’t hide anymore.

The thing is, I like Ooma. I haven’t had any problems with them, the service is cheap and (until today) reliable. That seems to be the sentiment of most people, but their comments today are focused on the failure of Ooma to communicate with them. I think that Ooma could have really solidified their position in the minds of their customers by being up front and open through this.

Instead, they’re non-existent.

What Ooma should have done

So, what should Ooma have done in this situation? I’d say there are a few keys that they missed on that could have helped the situation.

1) Be first.  I found out the service was down by trying to call home. Then I did a Twitter search which linked me to this story as well as a few other stories from lesser known websites. Ooma should have been the first one to talk about it, explain what they were doing to fix it and do everything they could to direct all conversation and questions to their Facebook or Twitter pages.

2) Be transparent.  Similar to “be first,” they should have been the source for all information and not left that to their confused customers, who said, “I think Ooma is out.” They should have found a way to not only communicate the outage to their customers directly (email? cell phones? etc.) but should have gotten the word out on their social media outlets. Then, do everything they can to get their website back up and give regular updates there.

3) Use every opportunity to communicate. Ooma isn’t an unknown entity. Get the word out every way you can. It’s not like your customers aren’t going to know…they can’t make phone calls. Have Ashton tweet something. Get the word to tech sites (incidentally, TechCrunch picked up the story shortly after the conversation started to build.) Let people know, “Hey, our service is out and our website is down. But, get updates and ask questions on Twitter or Facebook.” A visit to their social media outposts reveals little more than sales messages. Sad.

4) One source of information. If something like this happens, there should be one person (or a team) responsible for fielding questions, providing updates online, etc. The communication these days is almost as important as fixing the problem. While people can get more information than ever before and are more demanding that ever before, they are also more forgiving if you are honest with them and let them know what’s going on. There shouldn’t be any conversation about the outage without Ooma having a presence/response/comment.

Do I think this will hurt Ooma in the long run? It might. I know I’m not going anywhere because it’s cheap enough and I’ve never had any other problems, but others may not feel the same way. I do think that Ooma blew what could have been a big opportunity to turn the negative attention they are getting into a positive by simply being open and honest.