Follow-up thoughts on customer influence in social media
Last week, I posted an entry asking whether social media is really as empowering for customers as it’s made out to be. One of the sites my blog gets fed to also has the entry and there was some interesting commentary on the post about an artist, who had been ripped off, and who protested about it to the company and on social media sites. The company denied it, until Neal Gaiman, the author stepped in and spoke up on his social media, with his thousands of followers. Only then did the company respond to the artist and show any sign of trying to remedy the situation.
So do you see how social influence really works and who is really empowered? Yes consumers are empowered by social media to a larger extent than ever before, but companies will only listen when you can get someone behind you with a sufficient following that it makes the company pay attention to how their reputation is being effected by the influential person. The key to getting a company to respond to social pressure on social media is to find people who will take up your cause and spread it to everyone they know.
And to any company that reads this, it truly speaks to the state of customer service that consumers need to get someone influential and famous behind them, to get you to respond in the way you should respond in the first place. Companies actually have an unprecedented opportunity to engage their customers proactively with good customer service, but continue to drop the ball in favor of trying to preserve the bottom line. The problem with that thinking is that it alienates customers and loses their loyalty, and the truth is that the bottom line is driven more by customer loyalty than by anything else.
Social influence is powerful and shouldn’t be underestimated, but we also shouldn’t overestimate it, as some social media enthusiasts are wont to do. It’s important to understand what social media can do, and more importantly what you need to do, to get the results you want. For customers that want a company to respond, find someone who’s influential and get that person behind your cause. The company will respond then. They have no choice when they see that they are getting lots of negative publicity. That, in the end, is really the equation of social influence and customer service.
Categories: customer service, Social Media
Tags: customer service, social influence, Social Media, Taylor Ellwood
