As social media evolves, I’ve been wondering if the adages we all know still apply. I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about turning the adages upside down; one I left out was “customers are in control.” But should they be?
Over the years, companies have taken heat for customer-unfriendly actions:
- A decade ago, I was at Fidelity during a communications crisis called “Basic-Gate.”
- Sprint fired some customers.
- Ford let out the legal dogs on a brand fan in the “Ranger Station” situation.
But at Fidelity, the customers encouraged to switch channels were more likely to ask about the weather than for a stock quote. Sprint’s customers weren’t very different. And after the social media mob calmed down, the truth about the Ford situation emerged.
You may have even heard of the situation where a conference attendee requested free shoes from a Crocs brand representative otherwise she threatened to defame the brand on her blog.
Recently, Powered’s Joseph Jaffe highlighted a comment from Ad Age about Nestle’s Facebook situation. It takes an alternate point of view to common brand advice, which I’ll excerpt here:
“NOW, in a day when the kids all have megaphones and a sense of unassailable entitlement, the new social order is that when one of them lights a bag of dog sh*t on the [brand's] front porch, the [brand] is supposed to proclaim what a funny little kid he is…If [the brand] doesn’t respond this way, [it's] a dinosaur who doesn’t get it.”
I think the confusion comes into play where individual voices are mistaken for customer voices. When you dig down into the root of Nestle’s issue for example, it’s revealed that an organized protest lies at the heart of the matter. Then often, the echo chamber rushes in and magnifies the issues. And it’s all individuals making the noise, looking like an apparent customer revolt when in fact the brand hasn’t lost control at all – it’s still dealing with the same detractors as usual, new channel.
In fact, putting customers in control is the solution to this issue. How? By creating customer advocates, brands have supporters that can defuse issues in social media often before the corporation has time to mobilize. And brands create advocates via positive experiences that play out in a fair value exchange between institution and individual. Lesson: all customers are individuals, but not vice versa. The distinction is important!
Hi Peter,
It is no question if Customers are in control of what they do and say about you when they are among others/themselves.
What Customers do not control is what you do with that. That is entirely up to you… It always has been, and it always will be..
To which extent you will be influenced by what Customers or others say about you, that’s the difficult part: who to listen to, and who not to listen to? Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should..
Good post. Thx.
Wim Rampen
@wimrampen on Twitter
As a customer service evangelist, I’m all about customer-centricity. You make some very valid points although I think they are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Still, I wonder how much the bottom line was impacted at United after the guitar video went viral or how much Nestle was impacted by its (mis?)handling of the Greenpeace situation.
But you are right, some of these “conversations” have an extremely low signal to noise ratio.
Regards,
Glenn
Hi Glenn – I’m not sure either of those events had much of a material impact on either brand; if anything, media outlets and individuals care likely more than the companies. However, as social media expands, these issues have the potential to become much larger…so better to learn now. Seems like brands are taking the lessons to heart.
“Lesson: all customers are individuals, but not vice versa. The distinction is important!”
I love that.
I feel the same way about Nestlé never losing control; they were dealing with the “same sh*t, different day” only this time in a different channel as you mention.
I have to applaud Neslté for their stance. They’re doing the right things by canceling contracts with illegal suppliers and by taking the necessary steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. What else are they supposed to do?
The echo chamber, as you elude, is a bunch of noise. However, the “Nestlé people” responding to Facebook fans should be reprimanded for their ill-use of the discipline. In fact, their responses had a lot to do with the whole ruckus in the first place.
I’m totally indifferent to whether it’s Neslte or Unilever that’s killing the rain forest. There are so many other corporations doing the same thing – Greenpeace goes after the international brands to get the message across.
But at the end of the day, we only have ourselves to blame because we continue to buy things without thinking about the impact we make.
@joeszabo
I’m with you, Joe – I wrote a post earlier highlighting the faces of failure in social media and inexperience is certainly one of them, as Nestle demonstrated all too publicly.
I’ll echo your comment in saying that it’s real life that matters most – social (and other media) are there to influence and report, but it’s what we do offline that really counts.
The master of nuance speaks again – thanks Peter!
Or like we say in Holland: all cows are animals, but not all animals are cows. True Wisdom
I wholeheartedly agree with the customer control, but it’s a thing I’ve been wondering about in soccer (football for the UK): why don’t the true fans stand up against the 50-100 hooligans that spoil almost every game, the club, maybe even the sport itself?
Unsure there, maybe because those hooligans look big, fat, have lots of tattoos and seem very angry
Anyway, I think social helps a lot to link together that crowd of true customers that doesn’t want individuals to (wrongly) dent their brand. Of course there’ll be some side effects (some people -not mentioning names here- e.g. are really overenthusiastic about their Apple toys) but it will help brands as well as their customers
Great point Martijn – my colleague Kate Niederhoffer would certainly point out here that as in social psychology, the “bystander effect” must apply. The key is for brands to activate their fans against a vocal minority of detractors; not easy, but achievable.