Don’t Fear the Customer
During our editorial webcast “Get Past the Social Media Hype” last week, several attendees expressed concerns about creating an online customer community and potentially opening the door to a barrage of negative—and very public—feedback. To that we say: Customers are already talking about you, good or bad, in other public forums, online and off. An online customer community won’t increase your control of the conversation, but it will make it much easier to communicate with your customers about their concerns.
But that was only one concern.
Another was misuse of the community by customers. This included such issues as customers using a company’s online community to market their own products or services or making inappropriate comments, as well as having the staff on hand to catch these things.
In the case of an inflammatory customer comments, the best-practices approach is to leave the comment up and address it in a nondefensive, noncombative way. In other words, take action quickly and decisively to address the concern. In some cases it may be appropriate to make your initial comments online, and then take the conversation private with the customer. Once you’ve resolved the issue, you can always go back to the broader community and post a comment on how the situation was resolved.
But, be warned, removing an inflammatory comment could lead to a severe backlash among customers, some of whom will share their outrage with a much broader set of people across their online social networks (and offline, too, I’m sure).
That said, if a customer attempts to boldly market their own company or makes a comment that includes inappropriate language, then it’s most likely necessary to take action, in the best interest of your other customers. One best practice is to include a note near the comment field explaining that inappropriate comments will be removed. Explain that inappropriate doesn’t mean negative; instead it means such things as foul language, derogatory comments, or marketing messages. If someone posts such commentary, take it down. If you feel it necessary, you can post a comment as to why. In some extreme cases it may be necessary to ban a disruptive customer from your site. Again, ultimately, the goal should be to protect the best interests of your customers.
As for staffing, that will be answered in part by how many customers participate in your online community. Generally speaking, far more participants read than post. Also, if your community consists of your most highly engaged customers, it’s unlikely that you’ll have much if at all in the way of inappropriate commentary posted. But best to commit resources to monitoring the blog often (often being defined by how many people post comments and how often they do)—at least daily—because you’ll want to respond to customers’ feedback as appropriate.
For more on this topic, check out the insightful post “Negative Blog Comments: How to prepare for and handle a bad Consumer Generated Media Thread” on Scout; “The Fundamentals Still Apply” (March/April 2008, 1to1 Magazine) by analyst Ian Jacobs; and “Quantity Over Quality” (May/June 2008, 1to1 Magazine) by Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research. And visit www.getpastthehype.com for a list of recent case studies on how organizations are successfully using customer communities to build loyalty, engagement, and more.
Related Entries
- Starting Out in Social Media
- Forrester's Moira Dorsey: The Future of Online Customer Experience
- Online Customer Communities Embrace New Social Tools
Steve,
Great point. An online community should be about openness, two-way communication, and feedback; and companies from Dell to Starbucks are harnessing customers' suggestions, compliments, and complaints to improve their products, services, and process--to the benefit of themselves and their customers.
Well there is always a danger to let the general public have access to an "intellectual property" that you run--and that's basically what a community Web site is.
But the benefit is this--if you're getting more negative than positive feedback, doesn't that tell you that you're, um, not exactly on people's "stellar performer" product or service list?
And isn't that the whole point? If you're not really interested in doing things better than you're doing them now, why did you bother to go through with the farce of creating an online community to begin with?
Angela,
Good question. I think that the appropriate people involved in the hosting/tracking the community should set the guidelines in advance as to what they agree to be appropriate or not, based on both internal standards and what that company's customers generally would approve of or find offensive. There would probably still be some outlier cases that need to be considered individually when they come up, but having a policy in advance should cover most instances.
I like what you've said & agree that posting a policy about inappropriate comments is key to prevention. There's still some personal bias at play as to what crosses the line. One woman's foul language is another's passionate statement. And what to do about people who use symbols to finish a word that might otherwise get a comment flagged?