Becoming Social

[passionpop]

Many years ago I worked in hospitality and in the room service department of a hotel I worked in there was a sign that reminded us that 'it takes years to win a customer and seconds to lose one'. now winning customers is an uphill battle against the militant consumers on social networking.

Once upon a time when you upset a customer, they would tell some family and friends. now people are more likely to go on facebook to complain where even casual acquaintances who follow their news feed can be subjected to a hate filled diatribe about a particular organisation.

some companies ignore social networking. Woolworths for example have a twitter presence, but have a note on twitter that says 'Hi everyone, we’re not on Twitter just now but Like us on Facebook and stay tuned!'. this means that the 128 characters that you use to tell Woolies that you are upset (after @woolworths and a space)  are wasted on them, but everyone in your social network still knows what Woolworths did to upset you, even if woolworths don't.

It is important for organisations to follow what is being said about them on social networking because it lets them make improvements in things they may not have been aware they were failing in. Apparently for every person who complains, 26 remain silent. Just 4 complaints could mean you have lost 100 customers without you knowing.

I will admit that I am a militant consumer. What I have found when using social networking to air a grievance is that you often get people commenting with similar stories. like when i posted on Coles' facebook about products they no longer stocked. When they replied to me, an acquaintance added items she noticed missing from her local stores shelves. they may not have returned these items to their stores, but they acknowledged the request and that is a positive within the confines of a social network.

militant consumerism isn't just about telling companies when they are doing bad, it is about promoting companies that do right by consumers. it is a shame though that we don't get to say enough good things about a company.

It can also be found that the average consumer will make one comment about a company that has done well but about 3 about a company that has done them wrong, particularly if the company doesn't resolve the wrong. consumers are also less likely to praise than make a complaint. A complainer can do an imense amount of damage to a brand if the issue is not addressed

We are in a time of carefully controlled image management for companies and their brand. companies indoctrinate their staff with their core values and goals. I doubt many companies have a goal like 'to offend as many people as possible', it is usually quite the opposite. Social networking can show an organisation if they are 'on brand' and if not, what parts of the organisation are not living up to their core values.

companies pump money into training, customer service and marketing and this budget is often taken from other areas. One of my acquaintances told me how she applied for a job with an organisation and while doing the phone interview she found that the job wasn't in the area she thought and she informed the interviewer that it was not the job she was looking for... and was promptly hung up on. it turns out she had applied in customer service.

good customer service would have dictated that the applicant would have still be thanked for their time and their call. Outstanding customer service, would be to enquire as to what they were looking for and tell the applicant the types of jobs and key words they should be looking for when applying for jobs with this organisation. instead the she was hung up on. She was hung up on while applying for a job in customer service.

an applicant is still a customer. the applicant could have well walked away from that and said 'well if thats how you treat me, I would hate to require customer service from you'. what she did do is inform her social network.

our social networks have gotten larger thanks to twitter and facebook. now even the common people can share their stories (even if they have to limit them to 140 characters) . companies that are not managing their online presence and not dealing with online complaints risk losing customers. in short, social networking helps the average consumer sort the wheat from the chaff.

and there's a lot of chaff.

Comments

[shadzane.livejournal.com]

I forget that other countries still have Woolworths. I miss them here in the USA...

[jakie-em.livejournal.com]

they are one of the two major supermarket chains here.

I prefer the other chain though. Coles is owned by westfarmers which is a Western Australian company and being from WA...

[shadzane.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Woolworths here in USA weren't supermarkets, they were dimestores (aka variety stores)...

OK, I looked it up, your Woolworths stores are unrelated to ours. Never mind!

[jakie-em.livejournal.com]

that would be like what 'king kong' was for us until they closed down then. I loved them. I have heard in some cities Japanese ¥100 stores are popping up under a different name to fill the void and I hope we get one in Perth soon.