It all started with a complaint: Refrigerators and Siemens' crisis management

The “war” between Luo Yonghao and Siemens started on Luo's blog post on Weibo, a Chinese microblog website:

“My Siemens refrigerator and washing machine that I bought three years ago were broken one after the other," said Luo. "-- I won’t buy products from this unfortunate brand anymore. Japanese electrical appliances are more reliable.”

Luo is the founder of a private English School -- Laoluo School, an Beijing-based company. He is also a blogger, bestseller and movie director (his first movie Xiao Ma released online on October, 2011.). With more than 1 million followers on Weibo, Luo’s posts are often reposted and commented by a great number of Weibo users -- hundreds, or even tens of thousands.

 

(1136534 followers by Nov. 4, 2011)

For only a few days, there were hundreds of arguments following Luo’s post, from the quality of Siemens to the comparison between Japanese and German electrical appliances. Of course, online comments never lack remarks.

How do you close the door of your refrigerator? Slam it without looking at it? Or slowly close it as if it is something very fragile, and you have to recheck the door in case it is not firmly closed?

If you never thought about it before, congratulations! You bought the right one! According to customers who commented on Luo’s post, they have to recheck it every time when they close the refrigerator, otherwise, it will have leaks and freezing problems. Family members were blaming each other because they thought it was the others’ fault for carelessly close the door, yet they did not know many Chinese Siemens’ customers were also suffering from this problem.

Customers are going to have obsessive compulsive disorder because of a refrigerator!

Where was Siemens when this topic about its products fiercely continued on Weibo?

As a foreign corporation which has the largest share in China’s electrical appliance market, Siemens apparently has someone monitoring how people talk about itself online. However what they did led the story to a more intensive direction. 

A staff from Siemens’ PR department contacted Luo, trying to persuade him not to post such negative comments on his web page. She also promised Siemens would send technicians to Luo’s house to have the devices fixed for free. What a “great” idea! A special offer? It might work for some people, but not Luo. The call almost irritated him, as he later posted on Weibo, she contacted him and offered him the service only because he was somewhat influential. How unfair it was to other customers?

Know your publics, and know whom you are talking to.

Siemens is an international corporation, and you might not expect it to be irresponsible to its customers. However, it seems that Siemens is unwilling to admit that is a quality problem. 

The following days, Luo post a video on Weibo showing how poorly the door of his Siemens refrigerator worked. He also advocated his followers to shoot a video as evidence and post it online if they had the same problem.

Hundreds of videos were posted and shared by Luo, and then by more from his followers’ and then their followers.

Click here to see a video uploaded by a Siemens' customer. 

Siemens did respond to the criticism on its Weibo, but denied its products having a quality  issue. Also, it promised to provide maintenance service for its customers (but didn’t mention its costs). 

This response received more critiques on Weibo. 

For most of the day, comments on Luo’s posts were mostly criticizing Siemens, but at late night, a considerable number of posts were all compliments on Siemens’ response. The situation was quite uncommon, thus those commentators were assumed by Luo as “mercenaries” of Siemens. 

Customers want honesty, not spin. 

More posts criticizing Siemens’ refrigerators and irresponsible announcement were published by Weibo users. (Note: In order to solve this door problem, Siemens suggested installing an alarm to warn users when the door is not firmly closed, rather than solve the door problem itself). 

The CEO of a PR firm contacted Luo again, hoping to solve this problem, which, apparently not the quality problem of the refrigerators, but Siemens’s reputation. The conversation was recorded and later posted online as evidence by Luo. 

This is the recording of the conversation in Chinese.

Luo, as a customer on behalf of other customers, simply wanted Siemens to 1) admit its quality problem; 2) admit its first reckless announcement; 3) promise free customer service to fix this problem or recall its products if necessary. 

The PR person even sent a draft announcement to Luo first to see whether he was satisfied with it, or he wanted some changes. However, the draft did not fully meet the three demands listed above, and was later published officially despite the fact that the PR person promised Luo that Siemens would use Luo’s edited version of announcement.

Luo has stopped trying to talk to Siemens, but keeps posting about Siemens.

It is a long story, and if there is an award for the worst crisis management cases in China, this case should be one of them. 

Let’s  learn something from this case to see what a PR practitioner should and shouldn’t do when facing this kind of crisis on social networking websites:

Should do

1. Monitor your publics’ comments on your company and products from your company.
2. Respond to your publics as soon as possible when an issue raised.
3. Respond thoughtfully and responsibly.
4. Be HONEST!
5. Keep in one voice.

Should not do

1. Hire people to comment on your side (because this is not only unethical, but also easy to be discovered).
2. Spin.
3. Break the commitment.

A phenomenon that is worth mentioning is, often when some people are criticizing a company on social media, the employees from that company will go to that person’s page and argue with him/her. It seems that the employees are helping the company by showing their loyalty to and praise of the company. However, what they do is jeopardizing the company’s reputation.

Since the employees are considered as representatives of that company, their arguments with its publics will only lead to a worse situation.

The “war” is not over, yet. We shall be glad to have such a “paranoid” person here who is actually trying to tell everyone that we have the right to be well served, simply because we are all stakeholders, and we are customers.