Brand Loyalty Starts with Transparency

The main story

It was definitely not a good month for fan-favorite Garmin. On July 23rd it was reported that users weren’t able to track their workouts or access their account data.

To make it even worse, call centers were down without the ability to respond to emails, calls, or online messages.

Naturally, users flooded Garmin’s social media accounts with their problems prompting a company response claiming they were simply “experiencing an outage”.

Turns out, “outage” was really code for a “large scale ransomware attack” against the company’s systems.

Guess who didn’t like that?

Those same users took to Twitter and opened the floodgates full of complaints and messages about the deception.

Sure, bugs pop out of nowhere and servers go down, but masking a ransomware attack involving users data isn’t something you can quietly brush away.

Teachable Moment

Give everyone a chance to be on the same page, especially when you don’t have a solution in mind. It’s better to start the narrative about what’s going on with your brand rather than be last to the party.