If you were in a sorority in college, the following scenario will be familiar: You post a cute pic on Instagram, one where you’re holding a drink. Maybe it’s an ambiguous red solo cup, or a beer bottle partially out of frame. Either way, your sorority’s standards board quickly contacts you: “Hey girly! Super cute pic, but could you take it down? It goes against our sorority values. Don’t wanna look bad to the PNMs!”
Apparently, the situation isn’t unique to srats. If you post a complaint about Tesla to social media, you might get a similar request to delete your post.
Tesla’s solar power division, Tesla Energy, reportedly has a team of 20 employees that acts as the company’s own standards board. It scours the internet looking for complaints against the company and, according to former employees speaking to Business Insider, they are instructed to “politely ask customers to delete their social media complaints.”
It goes beyond just product complaints, too. An ex-employee also told Insider that a separate team of nine people specifically looked for posts complaining about CEO Elon Musk. I guess making the head honcho look bad in front of the internet isn’t a great look for potential new members – I mean, potential customers, either.
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To be fair, having a dedicated team searching for complaints against its company isn’t unheard of. Usually, it’s a positive thing. The bureaucracy of customer service departments can be disheartening, so many customers do turn to social media to get companies’ attention. But while engaging on the internet with customers is welcome, asking them to delete any negative comments, resolved or not, seems like an overstep.
Confusingly, a former employee in Tesla customer service also told Insider that they would actually suggest that customers complain on social media if they wanted quicker service. So apparently the preferred Tesla method is to go ahead and tweet your disdain, but then please immediately take it down, thanks very much.
It’s a particularly obsessive way to manage a brand’s social media image, and quite frankly, it feels a little over the top for a company with a CEO who tweets as carelessly as Elon Musk does.
If Tesla’s gonna act like a sorority on overdrive, maybe they shouldn’t tell their customers to post the very comments they want to take down. At least srat standards boards have clear guidelines!
