SmugMug: Bad Timing on a Price Increase and a Social Media Crisis Unfolds #smugmugged

This is a collection of Tweets that came from a recent announcement from a photography site SmugMug. SmugMug sent out an email late on Friday before a 3-day weekend and their customers went to Twitter to unleash their complaints. I found this interesting because I’ve never watched one of these types of crisis unfold in realtime and to see how the initial set of customers took to social media. SmugMug responded well but as time went on, more customers got the memo and the hits kept coming from even more customers.

I’m not a customer but @meg_ is and when she told me about the email she received late on Friday I cringed. As a person working in social media I knew a storm was brewing and it only took minutes for customers to go to Twitter with their complaints.

The reasons for the price increase are not my concern, they will have to explain that to their customers. What made me pay attention was that with a large customer base that uses social media dropping this email when they did was not a smart decision.

Now the company is having to respond to unhappy customers and put out a fire that could have waited until Tuesday when they have returned from a long weekend. But, then again… what do I know?
Kudos to @smugmug and @donmacaskill for staying engaged. It sucks but its the right thing to do.