Mark my words (no pun intended) businesses not aware of the power of social media and the Internet are in for a rude awakening. Like it or not, the consumer voice just got amplified by a million -- so if you're not rolling out class service, the world is going to hear about it!
Remember the songwriter whose guitar got ruined while flying with United Airlines? He couldn't get satisfaction from the company so wrote a song, performed it on Youtube and it went viral. Now over 12,000,000 viewers have seen the video, "United Breaks Guitars." Not the kind of advertising they were looking for.
Papa Johns also found out the hard way that the most junior of employees reflects on the whole company when in New York an Asian woman found she'd been referred to on her receipt as "lady chink eyes." She simply snapped a shot of the receipt (used by employees to know who to give the specialty pizza to) and posted it on Twitter. It too went viral. Papa John's head office was left scrambling to make amends and make sure it didn't happen again.
New on the scene is a website co-founded by the songwriter of "United Breaks Guitars", Dave Carroll. It is called Gripevine.com and that is also the web address. This site is to give consumers a public forum to be heard about any dissatisfaction or business horror story they might have. Companies will have the opportunity to subscribe to the site and address issues as they arise.
Right now, not in the distant future, consumers have a means of leveraging word of mouth to astronomical proportions. Word of mouth is now times a million.
What I love about this is the pressure it puts on business to heighten customer service and satisfaction. What I hate about this is that it encourages the power of word of mouth to accentuate the negative.
In a complete inspired counter move I'm beginning the Greatvine.ca! Brenda Ellis is a computer whiz in my Sutton office and we've already purchased the domain. I'm going to hashtag #greatvine and keep these public areas to emphasize the great experiences we have with a person or a business. Stay tuned and help with the grass roots endeavour to highlight companies doing a wonderful job with fantastic customer service. Each day that I post a blog I will also post a great business at #greatvine.
The news is an easy way to see how slanted and consumed everyone is about what is wrong. Over a long weekend you would never see this report, "3,500,000 people travelled the highways safely over the long weekend." But, you sure would hear, "2 fatalities litter BC roads!"
Closer to my business, you would hear about the home sales from hell, but not that over 95% of all organized real estate transactions complete happily and without complaint. (In BC we do have a gripe outlet named the Real Estate Council of BC!)
Until we get the web site launched do join in the Twitter hashtag campaign to emphasize the business people you respect and recommend!
I encourage you to use your voice primarily to emphasize what is right in business. But for those businesses that just won't step up and provide excellence....let 'em have it with both barrels!
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