Update: via Scoble I stumbled onto the audio from BloggerCon – Chris Pirillo’s session on Users In Charge offers a great extra dimension to this discussion.
In the last two weeks, two different companies generated interesting lessons on customer service, the blogosphere and social networking.
First up – Vincent Ferrari at Insignificant Thoughts records his experience trying to cancel his AOL account. The ensuing “fifteen minutes of fame” snowballs as the call is distributed throughout the blogosphere and Digg, a popular news/social networking site. The story escalates as the mainstream media gets wind of it and appearances on NBC, CNN and MSNBC follow. AOL apologizes and terminates the agent.
Just as the storm is dying down, Brian Finkelstein from Snakes on a Blog posts a .58 second video to You Tube about his experience with Comcast. 425,867 views later, the clip is picked up by the major networks and cable outlets. Comcast repairs the issues and terminates the sleepyhead.
Both incidents highlight the growing power of the connected consumer and the danger to companies that ignore the interactive web. To be sure, the impact of the two events were in part because of company size, but size is relative – one bad blog, forum or MySpace post about business can be damaging, especially if it appears in Google searches.
Avoiding the harsh glare of negative publicity doesn’t have to be a full time job. For some businesses, it’s as simple as setting up some Google Alerts – for others; it will require full time monitoring and hefty retainers to reputation management companies.
Other companies have taken the proactive step of launching their own blogs. This works well when the company is transparent and committed to using their blog for a dialogue with their audience, but it’s not an overnight solution or effective when the blog simply regurgitates corporate marketing speak. Corporate blogging is still in its infancy – and as Microsoft recently learned, the audience usually follows the blogger.
The distributed nature of social networking sites and the blogosphere frustrates those who would like to leverage it.
At the same time, while you’re checking out Snakes on a Blog, consider what it would be like to have a fan so into your product that they’ve written about you 300+ times in 180 days; Brian’s quest has alerted 682,215 people about the upcoming SoaP premier. That is unbudgeted publicity that goes right to the bottom line. It’s almost enough to make you forget all about the downside, but trust me – consumers who blog won’t go away any time soon. It’s time to bring a fresh set of eyes to your customer service, retention and return policies before they do.
