Price ChopperPrice Chopper Chief Operating Officer, Jerry Golub, and Heidi Reale, Director of Consumer Insights, spoke to students in Syracuse University Professor Anthony J. Rotolo's "Social Media in the Enterprise" class about company practices.
Most of the discussion focused on their response to an incident last month where a Syracuse-area Twitter user complained about the store. After the tweet was posted, a Price Chopper employee chose to contact that customer's employer, scrutinized on Rotolo's "Price Chopper Fail" blog. Rotolo invited the company to speak to his students Tuesday afternoon.
Golub started Price Chopper's presentation by saying, "How we approach social media is a natural extension of how we approach our business." He continued, "If you're not relevant to your customers, you're not going to be successful as a company."
Kelly Lux, Syracuse University and iSchool Social Media Manager, moderated the discussion. Students were allowed to ask questions, as well as any Twitter users who posted a tweet with hashtag #rotoloclass during the class. In less than two hours, over 675 tweets were posted in the Rotolo discussion.
Some highlights from the Twitter conversation:
@kimincuse: I think having the President and CEO of @pricechopperNY in #rotoloclass really shows this is a HUGE deal for them. #rotoloclass
@dhrosen: @PriceChopperNY COO seems pretty sincere.... Wonder if others feel the same way too #rotoloclass
@andygsuch: "with 24k employees, 1 or 2 r goin to go off the reservation once in a while, and thats exactly what happened." #rotoloclass @PriceChopperNY
@AlyssaHenry: My main problem with response was the mass-apology tweets that were sent out- everyone got same tweet. Not personal enough #rotoloclass
@andrewfarah: I'd have a hard time trying to manage 24,000 employees. How about you? #rotoloclass. Props to COO of @pricechopper
@JPedde: Yep. RT @PJASchultz: @dhrosen The apology totally sounded canned, scripted, and completely non-genuine. TYpical PR BS. #rotoloclass
@PattyMayz: an employee's duty to its employer doesn't end when you leave the office...it ends when you leave the company...#rotoloclass #lessonslearned
@shaycolson: Glad to hear. RT: @KellyLux How long before C-level involvement? About 3 hours per Jerry Golub. As soon as they had the details #rotoloclass
@gahugel: really good point from Heidi, keep personal life away from corporate while using SM. Dont want customers seeing wrong things #rotoloclass
@meglish: "Nothing is considered private, regardless of your privacy settings." Thats really @PriceChopperNY policy? #rotoloclass
@PriceChopperNY: We did learn a lot, as you can see! RT @KellyLux: "are you in any way glad this happened?" @PriceChopperNY "No" #rotoloclass
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