Blogging as a Threat
April 21st, 2007 by Chief NutHere’s a story from ResumeMachine.com.
Recently we had a server glitch where an order was only partially processed and a wrong boilerplate follow-up letter was sent to the customer…. Needless to say this was verrrrrry confusing to the customer.
What was interesting was, like many customers that become irate (thank goodness we get so few), this person did NOT threaten to notify the Better Business Bureau, nor did he threaten to call his lawyer, nor did he even threaten to file a charge back with his credit card provider…. What he did threaten to do was to blog about this event!!! AMAZING.
I took a look at his blog and guesstimated what kind of reach and impact his post would have and it was significant…. He could indeed cause a lot of damage to our brand if he were to have posted his original thoughts and feelings…. We were able to rectify the situation with this customer by providing an extension to the service and a refund for the inconvenience of it all.
This realization of how he might use his blog as a weapon within a customer service situation didn’t change our course of action … we always strive to make the customer happy at any expense…. However, this certainly does change my perception of how a blog can be used by the consumer!
In this case we were lucky…. The customer let us know that his negative blog post was a potential recourse for him.
Question: How many companies don’t get that warning… … don’t provide the correct level of customer support, and then BAM, they get hit with a doozie of a blog post…. YIKES!
Your customer has a lot more power today than they had in the past!… Before, an angry customer, frothing and yelling at the front counter, could be heard by 3 people all the way over in aisle 11…. Now, they can be heard by 3 billion people around the world.
I hope this shifts your paradigm a bit.
Ouch. Now that would hurt - blogging as a threat. This is the first time I’ve read something like this. Something to consider. But it goes both ways I guess. What if you had collection problems, it might be an interesting recourse.
Good show that it wasn’t negative for you. YIKES! is right.
Comment by Ed Roach — April 24, 2007 @ 9:41 pm