EA Able to Laugh at Itself
Electronic Arts is one of the companies that gets it when it comes to customer relationships. The company's senior director of customer support, Boyd Beasley, is one of our 2008 Champions. But EA isn't just doing service right, it understands social media (which it should, given its young videogame-playing customer base). A few weeks ago the company used YouTube to turn what could have been a negative customer story into something positive.
One loyal fan of EA's popular Tiger Woods PGA Tour titles posted a video on YouTube showing he'd found a glitch in the 2008 version. He was able to stand in the middle of a lake and still hit a shot. He dubbed it the "Tiger Woods Jesus shot" and quickly other gamers were trying to recreate the scene.
Someone at EA must have seen the video (which now has nearly 500,000 views) because when it debuted the 2009 version of the game earlier this month, it posted this video on YouTube as a response.
Glitches in video games can be a sign of weakness for a world-class company like EA, with gamers asking "if they let this slip by, what else is wrong with the game?" However, EA's response was so good no one is even asking that. Not only is this a great example of social media, but it's 1to1 communication at its best. EA included the YouTube name of the person who originally created the video, showing that it really is paying attention to what its customers are saying about its games.
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As we all know the reality of the situation is NO software ships without bugs. Most are never seen by the customer. Companies do themselves, their products and their customers a disservice when they ignore this reality. Kudos to EA to have enough confidence in their products to admit their faux pas. And they did it in a manner their customers could appreciate.
That's amazing! Great idea by EA to use social media and viral video to promote its product. But after seeing Tiger's recent near-biblical performance at the U.S. Open, maybe this is real.