By Kate Connors, Senior Account Executive & Social Media Strategist, Media & Communications Strategies

Let me start with a simple question: What is a brand’s number one goal? Answer: To please their customers. To many of us in the communications world, this seems like an obvious statement. Yet recently, Rue21, a young-adult/teen fashion store with 968 store locations, found themselves not adhering to this model.

Shelby Buster, a 14-year-old, entered a Rue 21 store in Eugene, Oregon with the hope of buying something special for her birthday. That hope was shot down when an employee of Rue21 allegedly told her that she was too fat for their clothes and that she should leave the store. So what did Shelby do? She took her story to social media.

Before the days of Twitter and Facebook, this is a story that might have fallen under the radar. Of course these days, that’s not the case. Customers across the U.S. attacked Rue21 via social media and demanded an explanation. The explanation, however, is where this brand fell flat:

We have investigated the claims made by Ms. Buster and to this point have been unable to substantiate them. We have been unable to corroborate that the incident actually happened. rue21 has over 950 stores nationwide. We value diversity and welcome all customers in our stores. We train our associates on inclusion and do not condone discrimination in any form. Behaviors like that described are unacceptable and are not by any means a directive of the company. – Statement from Rue21

In this day and age, a statement like the one above is not acceptable. Facts vs. hearsay is a thing of the past. Regardless if the store can prove an employee made this actual comment, a customer was left unsatisfied and her dissatisfaction sparked an online movement. Customers don’t want to hear that the allegations couldn’t be proved—they want to hear that Rue21 is outraged that a teen girl was made to feel this way and that they are going to do everything they can to reach out to Ms. Buster and make her feel welcome in future visits and, at the very least, personally hear her concerns.

What Rue21 could have done:

Issued a statement that started with a genuine apology to Ms. Buster (with a disclaimer that they were sorry for her experience and are investigating the claims—if stated properly legal liability can be mitigated—not a defensive claim about her accusations.
Launched a campaign on their website and social media to feature customer testimonials. Who is the Rue21 customer? Do the stores really welcome diversity and all sizes? Find positive stories to tell.
Praised Ms. Buster for taking a stand and sharing her experience. So many teenagers would have kept this incident to themselves. Instead, she is paving the way for other teenagers to come forward against bullies, whether that be store employees or classmates. Rememeber, perception is everything and Rue21 needed to first respond to perception of discrimination, after all there were thousands of Web viewers who received a negative image of the retailer.
We all can learn something about how to handle brand management from Rue21, but the most important lesson is this: your customers come first and they should never be disrespected on the Internet, regardless of the allegations.