SentriLock – An Example In How To Monitor Social Commentary

Some people ‘get’ how to monitor their brand online and others don’t; SentriLock gets it.

The following is a real chain of events that happened this week. They start off good, get bad and then get really good really quickly; it’s a perfect example of how to turn something negative into something very positive.

The story began on this blog on Monday when we posted a press release from SentriLock announcing the debut of the “REALTOR® Lockbox NXT Wireless, the industry’s first truly wireless lockbox.”

One reader, J.D., commented positively on the post:

“Wow – very cool – how much do these cost per unit?”

A reasonable question one might think. So I telephoned SentriLock and asked but was surprised to be told by the representative “I have no idea”. Never one to accept ‘no’ for an answer I asked if anyone at SentriLock had a ballpark price, surely there is some sort of ‘between this and that’ price range I suggested but the response was “No one here knows that”.

I updated J.D. via the blog post and added a “Wow!” for effect. How can a company not know the price of it’s own product? I guessed it was between $1 and $1,000,000 but that wouldn’t really help J.D.

In a little under 12 hours SentriLock responded, specifically John L. Heithaus, Senior Vice President Sales, Marketing and REALTOR® Alliances. The SentriLock Website has John listed right under Scott R. Fisher, the companies President and CEO, so he really represents the company.

John commented:

“Stephen, I am sorry to hear you did not get the information you requested. I will phone your office tomorrow to provide greater detail on the NXT Wireless and SentriLink system. In the event any of your readers would like to keep posted on the upcoming deployment of the system, please email us at sentrisales@sentrilock.com.

Thanks for your interest!

John Heithaus”

And he did follow up, the very next morning. Not only did John answer my question he explained that he had additionally spoken to the support team to ensure that they have an answer should the question come up again.

But it gets better. John had clearly researched not only AgencyLogic but also our parent company and was extremely knowledgeable about what we do. When we talked it transpired that John was intimately familiar with where we are located and during a short but pleasant conversation we realized we had several things in common.

But it still gets better. John sent me a follow up email immediately after the call and we have agreed to meet at the Inman conference in New York in January.

This needs another “Wow!” but this time for all the right reasons!

It is so much easier for people to complain instead of compliment, trust me, I’m English, it’s a national hobby over there. But this is an example that has to be complimented. I cannot think of any better way to have handled the situation. John’s follow up demonstrates not only how important it is to monitor social commentary but also how to deal with it. SentriLock be proud!

The obvious questions is ‘how do you monitor social commentary?’ The good news is it’s easy; the answer is Google Alerts. We’ve written about this free and valuable service before. Check out the post; people are probably talking about you and if they are you need to be involved. If you need more convincing see what happened to United Airlines when one of their clients used social media to publicize a problem.

BTW, the answer to the question is that the products list price to associations is $79 with discounts for orders of 10 and up. There is no additional charge for wireless. The base station price has not been set but is estimated to be between $75 and $85. There is one other charge of between $2 and $5 a month for the cellular band communication service. Seems like a good deal to me!

Tagged as: google alerts, John Heithaus, SentriLock, Social Commentary, wireless