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I had to do a marketing case study or “show and tell” in class awhile ago, what else would I use, but social media?
Two bloggers, Pat Law and Steven Hodson from Singapore and Canada, had negative experiences with Challenger (a Singaporean Best Buy alternative) and Tim Hortons (the Canadian alternative for Starbucks) respectively. With Pat, there was a huge mess with getting delivery on time, horrendous customer service and problems all round. With Steven, a Tim Hortons cashier short changed his wife of $20, and despite the fact that it was obvious from the CCTV that there was an error, they were told there was nothing Tim Hortons could do.
Both cases resulted in pretty strong words from the bloggers and the commenters against the companies involved, but also pretty strong statistics. Pat shared with me her blog stats, and there were over 1,000 views in five days, with the average time spent clocking at six and a half minutes.
Think about that. 1,000 people with 6.5 minutes of negative exposure to your brand. You can buy all the ads you want and you probably won’t even get 6.5 minutes of positive brand exposure in a month.
Why is this a problem?
Any Monkey Can Blog
It’s a problem for companies because it’s just too simple for anyone to set up a blog and blog about a negative experience with your company. Why would I bother picking up the phone calling customer service when odds are I’ll get crappy customer service anyway? It’s just easier to “stick it to the man” online.
The Mistake
Companies are mistakenly not monitoring their brands online, thinking “no one” cares. Well, one thousand people at 6.5minutes each suggest otherwise. I think when we’re talking about customer lifetime value and potentially large amounts of revenue being lost (you can rest assured I’m not buying a television from Challenger although I’m in the market for one), someone should at least be attempting to make things right.
So What Then?
I'm Not Listening
Companies need to focus on good customer service and relationships to differentiate themselves. Especially for companies like Challenger and Tim Hortons who are selling fairly homogenous products, it’s just too easy for a consumer to go to another electronics store or somewhere else for coffee. Particularly in this recession economy, excellent customer service both in and outside the store may just be the differentiating factor you need. If you’re going to hire those service staff anyway, you might as well make sure they’re doing a good job of it.
The bottom line is this. Stop asking what positive ROI social media is going to bring you, because it isn’t the most important question. If it manages to bring in some sales/conversions, great. But at the very least, it can be used to negate the effect of such negative word of mouth. From one blog post, Challenger easily lost a $3k purchase from me, and who knows who else? How many people are going to forego that product from your company because of something they read, and your company did not respond to set things right?
How much is not getting involved in the social media space costing you?
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Comments
12.08.08
One of the biggest problems that companies have with implementing social media is that it's not a one-size-fits-all. You have to keep on tweaking stuff until it works.
Contrary to what many people may believe, I think that a ton of companies are starting to accept this and are becoming more willing to invest in social media. And it's a fact that it's becoming a hardcore recruiting tool as well.
And you're right, it should be less about ROI and more about what you're missing out on.
12.08.08
Thanks for the comment, Ryan. Definitely. The point is at the very least if companies aren't going to really invest in social media to improve the brand, then the minimum would be to engage in "defensive measures" like the above.
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