When you think of best friends you think of famous duos like Joey and Chandler, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, or Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow. Everyone has a best friend. If you are a girl, you probably have more ex-best friends than current best friends, but you get the point. I have had a lot friends throughout my life. I've had school friends, imaginary friends, Facebook friends, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, crazy ex-girlfriends, and of course my main bros. However, I had never been able to grant the title of "best" friend to any of those friends until this past April. On April 17th, 2013 my best friend spot was no longer vacant. On that day, I gave the other half of my friendship necklace to my current best friend...Waffle House.
I have known Waffle House for most of my life but did not grow closer to it until my college years. I couldn't tell you the amount of times Waffle House has given me shelter from the cold, fed me when I was hungry, or given me a place to go at 2:30 in the morning on the weekend. Waffle House has always been there for me and I didn't realize how much they cared until that April day. The night prior to the 17th, I had an awful nightmare that Waffle House no longer served scrambled eggs. I remember waking up in a cold sweat thinking, "How could they do this to me? Scrambled eggs are my fave." I had to uncover the truth, so I did what any person my age would do and I took my actions to Twitter...
My tweets generally consist of cheesy one-liners or letting my followers know that I really enjoyed the sandwich I just ate. I had never interacted with a company via Twitter until that day. This was the first tweet I sent to the Waffle House Twitter account...
I must admit, the all-caps was a little overkill but I had to get my message across. Sure enough, within minutes Waffle House tweeted me back and reassured me that scrambled eggs were still on the menu. Overjoyed with their response, I sent out another tweet...
I like to say that this next tweet was the defining moment that led to myself and Waffle House becoming best friends....
Do you see that!? Waffle House said we were "BFFs for life!!" FOR LIFE!
The moral of this story is not to tell you how I got my best friend. The moral of the story is that Waffle House is an example of a company that handles social media the right way. Waffle House is constantly responding to their followers in a fun, playful way that makes you feel as if they are an actual person rather than just a restaurant trying to sell you waffles. If more companies took time to respond to their tweets like Waffle House does it would drastically improve their impact in the social media world. I've told the story of these tweets so many times to people which is essentially free advertising for Waffle House from me. I would say my loyalty to Waffle House increased because of this experience and I will continue to be "BFFs" with them for the rest of my life. Screw IHOP.
It's really cool how brands can interact directly with their consumers. Especially when they totally exceed your expectations like how WaHo did!! #WaffleHouse #Jealous
ReplyDeleteMy roommate actually did have your nightmare come true, and one night at Waffle House she was heartbroken when the server told her that they were out of eggs and she could have her reg 2 scrambled eggs with hashies, bacon, and toast. I wonder what @WaffleHouse would say to her after a debacle like that?