The article, How Companies Use Twitter To Bolster Their Brands by Rachael King appearing in CRM Daily.com just goes to show how powerful social networking sites actually are.
Keep in mind the statistics…. Happy customers tell four to five people about their experiences. On the other hand, dissatisfied customers tell nine to twelve people about their dissatisfaction. To make it worse, the dissatisfied ones go out of their way to tell people. Now, throw in the instant communication of Twitter and Facebook, and those numbers become exponentially important.
The damage that one or two disparaging remarks can make will need to be considered by all companies and organizations these days. There just needs to be an intensified awareness as to what the ramifications can be, especially when handling a dissatisfaction issue. The more immediate the response, the better. That rush to make things right is more than likely to show up on Twitter or a blog that is read by many.
As the article states, companies often have personnel dedicated to monitoring the remarks made about them on the social networking sites. Most of them use these personnel to identify issues that they wouldn’t otherwise have been aware of. Most would agree that they would rather have the customer inform them of negative issues before broadcasting them on the internet, but if they are smart, their prompt and effective follow up will also be reported.
Hopefully, more and more companies will recognize that in today’s market, customers are more demanding and sophisticated than ever before. They will report their satisfaction levels to their networks, but their dissatisfaction will also be instantly broadcast. The smart companies will use this to their advantage and do everything possible to make it known that they will make the customer happy…. no matter what.