A credit-card data security breach was not a positive event in the history of Hannants, a chain of hobby shops in Great Britain, but the way the company handled it mitigated the problem and made customers feel like they were included in the solution -- more like partners than like victims. Hannants trusted its customers and their reaction to the news, and the company was rewarded with a largely positive response from its customers in social media.
Those customers are worldwide. It has cultivated an international mail order business that sells to customers in North and South America, Asia, and throughout Europe.
Out of the blue, Hannants had a problem when the company that fulfilled its credit-card transactions suffered a security breach, and the personal data of its many customers was stolen. Some of the data was used fraudulently.
