There is little worse that a company can do than follow up a major public relations problem with a social media error to top it off. That is exactly what credit reporting bureau Equifax has done.
This past Thursday, Equifax came out with a report that they had a security breach that possibly put millions of Americans at risk for having their identity stolen. Other financial information is at risk as well as the company is unable to say exactly where the hack came from or what those who stole information will use that information for. That was all bad enough, but Equifax followed that up by making a mistake on Twitter.
Those who were already upset that Equifax had not correctly protected their information would probably not like the fact that the company then went on to tweet out “Happy Friday!” on their Twitter account the very next day. It was very poor timing and left some people feeling very upset with the bureau.
It does appear of course that this type of tweet was something that was pre-planned and already in the pipeline for Equifax long before the security breach ever came out. That being said, it is something that some people are just not yet ready to be forgiving about.
The tweet had gone on to say that someone named Stevie was there and ready to help everyone with their customer service needs related to Equifax. Of course, it did not take long for the people of Twitter to jump all over this. The jokes about how Stevie was going to have a very rough day came fast. People were making all kinds of cracks about how Stevie was the last one to know about the security breach or even that he should look out for the angry mobs who would come after him.
CNBC.com reports that there is some speculation that Equifax was trying to make light of things with a little bit of humor. If that was in fact their intention, it is very clear that they were not reading the mood of the public accurately at all. Perhaps it was just that they had the tweet in the waiting for a very long time. Either way, many people were left feeling terrible and angry at the bureau about all of this.
Everyone relies on Equifax and others to report on their credit for them for a variety of purposes that they need that score for. To have a breach at one of these respected agencies like this is enough to frustrate a lot of people.
Dil Bole Oberoi
