Social Media Doesn’t Bite

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3. Customers are Empowered

You have any doubts? Here are a couple of recent examples of how consumers have demonstrated that they have more power to rein in abuses than ever before:

  • Remember Bank of America’s reversal of a $5 fee for debit card usage, which did not include any new service? Many consumers moved their accounts elsewhere, others threatened to do so and thousands of others bombarded the bank with emails and online petitions. And they tweeted and tweeted and tweeted to their hearts’ content.
  • How about Verizon, the nation’s largest provider of wireless service, dropping its plan to charge customers a “convenience fee” of $2 for the convenience of paying their bills by phone or online? A petition against the fees on Change.org accumulated more than 95,000 signatures in just 24 hours after their announcement.How about Daimler AG? In their presentation in the CES (Consumer Electronics Show), they used the picture of Che Guevara with a Mercedes logo in the beret. Within 48 hours, they were apologizing for this after an influential and well-networked group found it in extreme bad taste to use the image of a mass murderer in promotional material and quickly mobilized all social networks (click here for details).
    The question is not if this is going to happen again, it is how soon and how often.
Why Should I Care?

In the days before the Internet and networked social media, these occurrences/sentiments could have been dismissed. They could have been easily contained within a household (ever mailed a free coupon to a complaining customer?), a town, maybe even a city (it was so easy to merchandise a localized value promotion when there were only two or, at most, three major retailers in a region). Today, people realize there is power in numbers. And, yes, it is true that misery loves company. It has never been easier to find multiple “twin miserable souls,” and these souls will use the power of the network to make or break organizations, regardless of size (be it a corner deli, brand, company or even a government).

What Should I Do?

For starters, try to internalize what these insights may mean for your business/organization. Confirm via listening/monitoring tools how customers feel about you and then identify what changes you need to do in your organization to meet the needs of the new enlightened customer (think value and transparency for starters). Then and only then (because a hypocrite will be smelled a mile away) develop or adjust your social media engagement strategy.

One last piece of information to share – ignore it at your own peril: A recent study by Conversocial (as reported by MediaPost) shows that more than 60 percent of complaints and questions about retailers posted online on social media are ignored, in part because of the sheer volume of content created on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Worse, 30 percent of the retail chains surveyed don’t respond to any questions or complaints posted on social media, effectively choosing to ignore issues mentioned in these forums. What’s more damaging is that 88.3 percent of respondents said they’d be somewhat or far less likely to do business with a company that has visibly ignored other customers’ questions or complaints on social media.

Do you really want to ignore your customer? Only if you live in a self sustained island populated by the 1 percent, but you know as well as I do that we are all in this together.

Related articles:
Small Business Social Media: It’s All About Word of Mouth
Social Success Strategy
Get Social

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