<b>The refund wave nobody flagged</b>

<b>The refund wave nobody flagged</b>

It was 2 a.m. when a mid-size DTC supplement brand started getting tagged in replies that had nothing to do with their product. People were quoting a payment processor's outage, but the brand's name rode along because checkout failed on their store.

The listening dashboard read it as positive sentiment — folks were defending the brand. The truth was uglier: 340 carts abandoned in four hours, and the mentions were sympathy, not praise.

The team caught it only because one analyst sorted mentions by linked URL instead of keyword. Every spike pointed at the same broken checkout path. They swapped processors by morning. Recovered roughly 60% of the lost carts via a win-back email.

The takeaway: sentiment can be warm while your funnel is bleeding. Sort by the link, not just the word, or you'll mistake condolences for applause.