You’d think that businesses, especially large ones that have a social media presence, would realize by now that social media is 24/7. Apparently, Papa John’s didn’t get the memo.
Minhee Cho, Communication Manager at ProPublica, posted her receipt from her last night’s pizza order at about noon today. Retweets and comments about her treatment from this Papa John’s employee started swirling.
And they swirled for nearly seven hours before Papa John’s responded via Twitter. Luckily, the Papa John’s (tardy) response is an appropriate one, at least in my book.
But here’s the thing: I wonder how many people will continue to retweet Ms. Cho’s original tweet, and never even know that Papa John’s apologized and explained its course of action? Here’s a link to a Twitter search for #papajohns OR @papajohns.
Something to think about, especially for brands with broad name recognition.
I’m A Big Time Fan Of Papa Johns Pies. I Have To Say I Can Appreciate The Action That Was Taking In Terminating The Employee, However One Must Understand The Views Or Unprofessionalism Of One Employee Doesn’t Represent The Core Values Of The Company. Typical Case Of Bad Apple Spoiling The Bunch, However I Don’t Blow It Out Of Proportion, Because No Matter How Much Training On Etiquette & Customer Service, Some People Don’t & Won’t Get It. What If The Receipt Was Scanned & Emailed To Corporate, & Not Put Out On The Web To Cause Negative On Looks To PJ, I Think The Same Course Of Action Would Have Been Taken, Employee Terminated. All About How You Handle Situations, Hats Of To Papa Johns.. Faithful Pie Consumer 😀
~Nashi aka BaristaOnDutY
If you consider corporate HQ had to investgaten verify the receipt was real & possibly call folks in who were off-shift, I don’t think 7 hours was unreasonable. Firing an employee should never be a knee-jerk response, but as it was found to be appropriate then it is a clear sign of Papa John’s stance.
Scott,
You make an excellent point about seven hours from notification of the offensive message to firing being a reasonable (even short, in my mind) amount of time, esp on a weekend.
Barbara
What is your proposed course of action? It seems the only way to remedy that would be to ask the lady to remove her post to it’s not so easily RTed.
Even if Papa John’s responded right away, the original would still be out there, so the time to respond would not have made any difference.
Mike,
When I first saw Ms. Cho’s tweet, the first thing I did was check Papa John’s Twitter feed to see if there was any response at all (and there wasn’t, at that time).
What I’ve seen other companies involved in somewhat similar fiascoes do is respond to the original tweeter letting him/her know that the incident is being looked into. And that’s what I would have preferred to see.
I can’t even imagine what the Twittersphere’s response would have been if Papa John’s had asked her to delete the tweet (even though I bet they wish it wasn’t out there).
Barbara