While PayPal has served us well (and it still serves us well), a few months ago Fernando and I decided that we needed a full functional shopping cart.  Our sales funnel was just becoming too deep and too convoluted for something as simplistic as PayPal.

We needed full control over our sales process – up-sells, down-sells, cross-sells, continuity product, the works.

So I went on the hunt.  I remembered Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss discussing the whole concept of “risk free upsell” and how 1ShoppingCart has a lil’ script that allows that to happen; so I poked around and got some feedback.  It was Justin Christianson who then said, “Dude, why don’t you check out UltraCart, it’s awesome.  It has the whole up-sell process taken care of along with a ton of other features/benefits.”

I did.  And I have to admit, at first I was bewildered at all the options I had… all the menus, the configuration settings, not to mention the close to 500 page manual!  I was like, “Justin, how did you bother going through all this stuff?!”

His reply?  “Forget the manual… just use their customer support!”

And boy did I!

Their customer support was superb and was on top of everything.  With their guidance I got my sales funnel figured out and was all ready to rock until…

The Event That Caused Me to Flex My Twitter Muscles

You see, everything was coming along nicely.  I’ve spoken with their super friendly customer service representatives countless number of times on topics like, “How do I get an one-time offer salespage up?”  “How do I add an image?”  “How do I setup shipping?”  And things were rolling, but then I hit a snag.

I went to upload a few videos and they just refuse to show up.  So I called and asked and got they told me it takes time for the videos to process.

Next day, same thing happened and this time they told me to submit a formal help ticket so their tech guys can get on it.

A few days went by and I heard nothing.  I emailed a few more times, called a few more times, and felt like I was given the run around.  Each time I was promised that someone would get back to me but nobody ever did.

Finally, after 2 weeks of this horse-s**t (this was holding up our launch), I said enough was enough.  I grew sick and tired of being mistreated, neglected, and ignored.

So I looked to social media for help.

My first one was innocent enough and looked something like this:

But after becoming more frustrated with the situation and still not getting the response I was expecting (neither on the phone with them nor in email), I poured on the fire:

This Got UltraCart’s Attention – GOOOOO Twitter!

This is where the sexiness happened (thanks to Twitter and kudos to UltraCart for patrolling the webspace for their names).  UltraCart got a whiff of my dissatisfaction and rather than sitting idly by while I stir up a sh*t-storm at their expense, they took action:

At around the same time, I finally got a straight answer from their customer service department (after I probed deeper and practically threatened to cancel service)… so I finally got some closure.

Here’s the Point…

Twitter Can Cause Harm IF You Let It, AND It Can Cause Good… IF You Allow It

Don’t sit idly by when some folks start talking about you/your brand/your company/an issue you care about.  Because sooner or later, it’s going to gather enough momentum, enough folks are going to get whiff of it (and gawd knows how many people will eventually blog about it)… that by then it’ll be too late for you to “take care of it”.  This is assuming...»

What you have just witnessed is how I was able to leverage the power of social media properly to “call out” UltraCart because I genuinely feel like I was being mistreated.  By the same token, you have also witnessed the ability for a company like UltraCart to quickly, efficiently, and tactfully diffuse a situation before it got out of hand.

All thanks to social media.

Use Tweets to Your Advantage

So how did Ultracart find me so quickly?  Well, I am willing to bet money that they are using a service called TweetBeep, where you basically setup an account and get alerted whenever someone Tweets any of your selected keywords.  In their own words, it’s “like Google Alerts for Twitter!”

So as soon as someone mentions your keyword, you get an email that tells you the Tweet and who Tweeted.  Or...»

On another note, you can use TweetBeep for more than just protecting your business.  You can use it to create business and draw more potential clients.  For example, my buddy Fernando Ceballos got his current health insurance plan because he tweeted one day how he’s looking for one.

And guess what?

Someone had setup their TweetBeep to get alerted whenever someone Tweeted about “health insurance” and he got in touch with Fernando and voila!  He got himself a client in Ferny.  Pretty neat huh?

So get creative, what can you use Twitter for?  What can you set your TweetBeep up for?

And lastly…

Don’t ever under-estimate the power of social media.

Raymond Fong