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Jan
9
The OTHER Side of Social Networking
January 9, 2008 | Anita Campbell
The Internet can be treacherous if you are a vendor faced with a disgruntled customer.
If a consumer doesn’t feel that his or her complaint has been satisfactorily dealt with — boom! The entire dispute (at least the customer’s side of the story) ends up on the Web for the world to see. Oh, and you can expect the dispute to grace the pages of the search engines for a half-life of at least 3 or 4 years.
In “9 Ways Social Media Can Hurt a Brand,” Kathryn Milette details how social media can be used against companies that are slacking in their responsibilities toward the customer. Any company thinking they can play hardball with customers in this day and age should rethink their stance.
We typically associate customer activism with B2C, but the same dynamics exist when your customers are small business owners. If business owners don’t get satisfaction through regular channels, it won’t take long to start thinking they have no choice but to appeal to the court of public opinion.
It used to be, “you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” These days, maybe the phrase should be, “you’ll be hearing from my webmaster.”
Comments
5 Comments so far
Reading those 9 tips makes my stomach ache. It’s terrible to think that years of hard work can be undone by one unhappy customer.
Thanks for including my story in your post, Anita. A chain reaction is happening — you are helping me get to get the word out about my poor experience with Kia, and hopefully encouraging companies to listen to their customers.
This is a double-edged sword. I agree with Amanda that it’s almost frightening to see the consequences that can be rendered. Gosh, I would hate to be on the receiving end of that!
However, if you’re the one with the negative experience and feel you’re being treated unfairly, such as Kathryn, then it gives you a tremendous “voice” that can be heard and can yield positive results.
There’s a lot to be learned from both sides of the fence on this one I guess.
Working with a big restaurant chain, I can tell you that all Kathry says-is so.
With so many “post your complaints” sites out there, believe me those customers take real advantage of it-and it works.
What goes around, comes around… I think it is a good thing that you could speak out, but as EJMalyn says, you could find plenty of “complaining” sites out there. I recently saw a sort of negative comment toward our establishment, but it was signed by an anonymous author, so I couldn’t do so much about the issue. The comment made me aware of a potential problem and I informed my co-workers. I am an advocate of spreading the good word.