More Sunshine

Yesterday I posted about Sunshine Village and their handling of some controversy on their Facebook page. It turns out that I made a few mistakes.

Mr Doug Firby, Associate Director, Communications for Sunshine Village emailed me directly to point out some of the errors of my post. Some things I wrote about have not been proven as fact. So I should have used more words such as 'allegedly' and 'apparently'. For those possible misrepresentations, I publicly apologize to Sunshine Village and to Mr. Firby. At the bottom of this post I have cut and paste a portion of Mr. Firby's email which directly addresses his concerns about what I said. I believe that is fairest for me to do for Sunshine Village as it addresses the comments I made in his words, not in mine.

However, the real facts of the situation are not pertinent to this blog. I'm not here to discuss what actually happened. That is for those involved to sort out between themselves.

This blog is about mobile marketing, and by extension social media marketing. My commentary is about their handling of the event on their Facebook page. And nobody can disagree that it probably hasn't been handled in the best way.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that at no time did Sunshine Village hold up their hand to their Facebook audience and make a bold, pronouncing statement of what happened, what is happening and what is going to happen, in a way that assures consumers that the right steps are being taken. The sample message I wrote yesterday was "Yes, we know there are some challenges with our staffing right now, and we are working to resolve those issues. We are also sorry to inconvenience anybody who was planning to ski at Sunshine Village on January 19th."

Mr. Firby indicates (see his comments below) that there were numerous examples of Sunshine Village attempting to respond to comments on their Facebook page. I was wrong, he is correct.

However, responses that I saw were inside the comments. And many of them came from Mr. Firby himself, using his own Facebook ID. So it wasn't clear, from a consumer point of view, that he was responding on behalf of Sunshine Village. And while addressing the individual Facebook user comments can be important, this situation warranted something much bigger in the bold, pronouncing statement. In this case, a Facebook status update would be more appropriate, and the message should be written to assure the Facebook fans of Sunshine Village that appropriate steps were being taken to address the situation.

Although I have already apologized for some inaccuracies, it is important to note that all of my information was gathered from Sunshine Village's own Facebook page. While this doesn't exactly ensure its accuracy (much of it came from comments), it DOES represent what most people who follow the Facebook page will believe. And those beliefs (accurate or not) could lead to a negative image for Sunshine Village.

I also note that the worst part of the entire episode, the posting of a link to an article about bad behaviour on the internet, has now been removed. This is proper - it should never have been posted in the first place.

I don't believe this story has ended. Sunshine Village still has an opportunity to fix this, but it will take some work. Time will tell how this finishes.

See also: Even More Sunshine.

*********

Here are Mr. Firby's comments copied from an email sent to me. Only the part of yesterday's post that had comments on it has been copied.

[snip]

Apparently several senior members of the mountain patrol staff (IT IS NOT ACCURATE TO SAY SEVERAL SENIOR PATROL STAFF WERE DISMISSED)were recently fired. The reasons for their firing have not been made public, but according to the rumourmill (on their Facebook page) the firings were controversial. So much so that a large majority of the staff (??? THIS SUGGESTS ALL STAFF – IT WAS ACTUALLY NINE PATROLLERS WHO PHONED IN “SICK”) chose not to come to work the following day to support their fired colleagues. This led to most of the mountain being closed, and a number of upset customers who had driven fair distances only to have the bunny hills (MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVE SKIED WAWA AND STANDISH WOULD NOT CALL THEM “BUNNY HILLS.” THEY HAD BLACK AND DOUBLE-BLACK DIAMOND RUNS) available.

What has followed has been nothing short of a social media PR disaster for the mountain. One that every marketer should study.

On January 19th, it was announced that a number of the employees were sick, and that 9 (EIGHT) of the 12 lifts would be closed that day. This post was made at 10:34 AM, not exactly enough time to allow people to make other plans. Following the post are 88 comments, many of them from locals who claim to know the real reason the lifts were closed; the staff were on strike (STRIKE IS A LEGAL TERM REFERRING TO LAWFUL PROTEST. UNLESS A COMPANY IS UNIONIZED, ANY WITHDRAWAL OF SERVICES CONSTITUTES AN ILLEGAL JOB ACTION.) to protest (ALLEGED) unfair firings. According to some posts, the original four were fired after confronting some people who were skiiing in a closed area of the mountain, one of whom is a family member of the owner. (AGAIN, SUNSHINE CANNOT COMMENT ON PERSONNEL ISSUES.)

The comments express some serious anger toward the mountain for decisions made that led to this. And for being essentially closed (except for bunny hills) (SEE NOTE ABOVE) on short notice.(THE CLOSURES WERE NECESSITATED FOR SAFETY REASONS. SINCE WE HAD NO ADVANCE NOTICE OF THE JOB ACTION, IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO GIVE GUESTS ADVANCE NOTICE, AND WERE ONLY ABLE TO COMMUNICATE ONCE WE UNDERSTOOD WE HAD FEWER PATROLLERS ON DUTY THAN NORMAL.) Among those 88 comments, many of which are scathing for the resort, Sunshine Village responded exactly zero times.

In another bit of storyline, two other staff members claim they were fired for participating in the non-work-day protest. Apparently some of the fired staffers are seeking legal advice.

Subsequent posts in the following days by Sunshine Village on their page offer status reports of which lifts were open. But none addressed the concerns raised in the comments. (THIS IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE. WE HAVE A TRANSCRIPT OF ALL CONVERSATIONS ON FACEBOOK, AND THERE ARE NUMEROUS EXAMPLES OF THE COMPANY ATTEMPTING TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS. AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT, EACH RESPONSE ONLY ESCALATED THE VITRIOL, AND SO WE EVENTUALLY CHOSE TO RESPOND VERY SELECTIVELY TO INFORMATION REQUESTS (e.g. “are all lifts running today”, “can I get a refund”, etc.) Each of these posts garnered significant comments, again many of them scathing.

In perhaps the worst bit of PR I've seen in a long time, the January 24th post by Sunshine Village on their Facebook page was this:

[image]

So instead of addressing the general concerns of their Facebook fans, they effectively accused them of collective bad behaviour. Instead of facing the issues, they became defensive.

This has led to a number of other scathing comments on their Facebook page. Clearly, Sunshine had no plan to deal with their public relations via Facebook in a time of crisis. And it has now also spilled over onto Twitter, Yelp and probably other social media areas. Not to mention the writeups in the local newspaper, the Calgary Sun and on the CBC news website.

Although they did offer a $20 discount (COUPON) that day (off a $70+ lift ticket), ($79, INCLUDING gst) that wasn't enough. Anybody who showed up that day should have been allowed to ski their 3 open lifts for no charge, AND should have been given a voucher for another free ski day.

More importantly, at no time did Sunshine step forward and say (via their Facebook page) "Yes, we know there are some challenges with our staffing right now, and we are working to resolve those issues. We are also sorry to inconvenience anybody who was planning to ski at Sunshine Village on January 19th." (THIS IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE. WE HAVE A TRANSCRIPT OF ALL CONVERSATIONS ON FACEBOOK, AND THERE ARE NUMEROUS EXAMPLES OF THE COMPANY ATTEMPTING TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS.)

Instead they have allowed the rumours to fester (FOR OBVIOUSLY LEGAL REASONS, WE ARE UNABLE TO ANSWER DIRECT QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO PERSONNEL ISSUES. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SPEAK OF THE ALLEGED INCIDENT WITHOUT GETTING INTO PERSONNEL ISSUES) and accused their Facebook fans of bad behaviour.

Marketers need to have a plan. Social media needs to be based around a strategy. And contingencies must be in place to deal with crises. Otherwise, you are just flailing in the dark.