Social media has become the voice of the common person who with enough pull behind them can make companies sit up and listen. Not everyone has that kind of pull but we all relish every story of success of those that do succeed in making companies listen to them and by sheer consumer peer pressure have wrongs righted.
Even though people like myself with small selective circles of friends and followers can complain and rant until the sun comes up the chances of us seeing the same reaction that people like Heather Armstrong (Dooce), Chris Brogan , or any number of popular bloggers is slim to none. It is people like those mention though that have made a big difference in how companies are beginning to react to negative comments and unhappy consumers.
Now as much as even little changes like these might warm the hearts of the social media mavens Bob Knorpp from BeanCast raises an important point – the underlying problem that is driving people to things like Twitter and Facebook is being ignored.
What bothers me, though, is the underlying problem that seems to be ignored in all of this: Customers wouldn’t feel the need to embarrass us en masse, if our customer service channels weren’t so completely broken. And don’t forget part two, which Len hinted at: What good is it to address social media as a customer service channel when we keep driving people to such venues with our lousy customer service?
For all the good that @comcastcares does on Twitter in order to help unhappy customers Comcast is still reviled for its lousy service. So really what good does all this social media effort achieve when the whole reason that people are driven to such public venues like Twitter and Facebook to get some sort of satisfaction. As well, which Bob points out – what happens when social media loses all its luster or we have all moved onto the next shiny thing.
It could be looked at from the company’s point of view that this is just a minor bump in the road where a minor number of natives are getting restless. So in the meantime just do what needs to be done to appease them and wait for this newest ‘consumer consciousness’ to blow over. Then it will be back to business as usual, because when you really think about only a very small fraction of consumers even have an idea about what social media is, and an even smaller fraction of those have big enough mouths to cause problems.
Keep that minority happy and feed their egos, letting them think they’re making a difference and like every March storm it will all blow over. The only thing that keeps companies awake at night is if social media doesn’t go away when the next new shiny thing shows up on the horizon. For them the real nightmare is when even people like you and me begin to be able to exert the same power as the big names in social media.
When that happens we will know that the tide has changed and companies will finally have to accept that pacification of a few isn’t an option anymore, and at that point we may actually see companies change for good.
It’s a good dream to have.
