As reported by Business Insider's Kate Taylor, Rent the Runway ($PRIVATE:RENTTHERUNWAY) made sweeping changes to its customer service starting today, July 1st. It now has a dedicated customer service Twitter account, as well as separate e-mail addresses for subscribers to either cancel or hold their subscriptions over.
Before this happened, the company's customer support appeared to be taking on water. According to Rent the Runway's social media data culled by Thinknum, its official account was replying to Tweets more in the past two months at a record pace, dealing with customers who took to Twitter to complain about order cancelation or product issues.
Last workweek — from June 24 to June 28 — the Rent the Runway Twitter account made 152 individual tweets. Only one of them, however, was an actual Tweet.
The rest were replies to customers who complained about their product on the social media platform.
Fortunately, there were some tweets that were a bit more positive, such as this exchange the company had with one person who was on the phone for over an hour:
This mounting displeasure was a slow burn; since late April, the company saw a slow increase in the number of Tweets and Replies they had to make on its official Twitter account.
That made May and June the most-active months of 2019 for the company's official Twitter account; in May, the company averaged 14 Tweets and Replies a day, then ramped it up to 18 per day in June.
With the new Twitter account that directly deals with customer support issues, as well as the new e-mail accounts to deal with subscription problems, Rent the Runway hopes to prevent another situation that transpired over the past two months. While one could have seen this coming through looking at the online backlash qualitatively, seeing this through the lens of data quantifies the issue that Rent the Runway had to figure out a solution to how it handles customer support.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Discount data shows how H&M saved itself from potential bankruptcy
- #WayfairBoycott? Social traction and job openings indicate it's doing just fine
- The Urgent Care industry is changing the way the nation thinks about healthcare
