Honesty Still Pays; Ask Eden

Honesty is the best PR policy.

About a month ago, I was scrolling through my timeline on Twitter (now X) when I came across an ad by Eden Life, a food and concierge service in Lagos. I’ve always known about Eden Life. Still, I never created an account until I saw the ad offering all the meals on the app for N1000. In this Lagos! Of course, I jumped on it; in fact, I sent the link to my friends and family groups as well. That Friday, I had a campaign shoot at work, so I set an alarm for 2:00 p.m. to ensure I didn’t miss out.

As the time drew near, I also sent a reminder to my friends and family, because we rise by lifting others, yeah?

That day, I bragged on set about how I was going to give everyone a treat because my typical budget covered meals from Chicken Republic and, on a very buoyant month, The Place.

At exactly two o’clock on that dastardly Friday, I took a break and placed an order worth N8,000 for eight items to feed the five people on set. By the time my order was confirmed, I got a notification that the meal would arrive in 90 minutes, and I was so excited that I bragged some more on set. Very few things got me going, like getting a great deal.

My Tweet before it all went downhill

Based on the generation of founders and the workforce, I’ve always placed Eden Life in the same category as companies like Chowdeck and Piggyvest that I believed I could trust. It wasn’t until it was 5:00 p.m. and my food hadn’t come that this trust began to shatter. I had called their mainland customer care number multiple times, which rang with no answer. On one occasion, at around 6:00 p.m., my call was answered, but whoever was at the other end of the line left me to listen to the sounds of notifications, so I assumed the answered call was a mistake.

At about 6:15 pm, I reached out to their customer care on Twitter, and seeing as I wasn’t the only one going through this, my heart sank. At this time, I just wanted to know if the order had been sent out so I could make substitute arrangements for my team. The customer care agent on Twitter at first assured me my order would be delivered that Friday, but later reached out an hour later when my team was packing up the set to say they were sorry but delivery that day wouldn’t be possible anymore. To say I was angry would be a good summary of what I was feeling at the time because I was also sad and tremendously hungry.

It frustrated me more because this affected my team as well, and I had to choose between driving them to the nearest Chicken Republic to our office or giving them cash to sort themselves out a few minutes before 8:00 p.m.

The days following involved them facilitating a refund, getting a text addressed from their founder, and me laughing at their order expectations and what they got, which they also shared on Twitter and email.

wahaurrr

In my opinion, it was like creating a campaign but setting your objectives and metrics like you had zero faith in your product marketing person. Anyway, I later found out this was a stress test on their part, and let’s just say I’ve resolved to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Now, while they handled the orders and the sales as a whole poorly, I have to give it to their crisis management team because, unlike most old PR heads, they did something that I consider the future of crisis management: be honest.

Even though what appeared to be the first phase of resolving this crisis was still delivering to customers despite issuing a refund (yes, I eventually got my eight meals), their next step, in my opinion, was even better.

In my six years of working in marketing communications, it always intrigued me how the older or boomer crisis managers would always focus on averting the attention of aggrieved customers or implementing an ignore it till it goes away tactic when a crisis springs up, and in a situation where these fail, they fall back to a classic strategy that always did the job, which was getting paid media to say awesome things about the brand till everyone considers it “not that bad” again.

However, this weekend, I watched the documentary Eden Life, which aired on what that day was like for them, and pretty much admitted to the fact it was an epic fail. You can watch it here.

Contrary to what businesses would rather practice, I have always been on the side of honesty being the best tool for crisis management. Your customers already know you messed up; the world knows it, and you know it.

As someone who is constantly on both sides of being a customer being communicated to and a communications manager doing the communication, in my opinion, affirming the feelings of a disgruntled customer with a promise to do better and doing better will always be a much better option in averting a crisis than gaslighting them.

I’ve found that very often, managing a crisis honestly might just be the push a business needs to move customers in its sales funnel from acquisition to loyalty.

PS: Since this crisis, I’ve used the app three times and participated in another stress test where they offered 30% off meals and got my food in time! So I will be using it even more.

However, my friend Sarah never got her order, and since she never sent a complaint, unfortunately, no one reached out, so there’s still work to be done.