Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

It really deals with two of the 10 "new rules" of customer service that I outlined in the book, namely:

• Customer service lives "in the now"
• Customer service lives in the "public domain"

The implications are very simple and I would argue, mission critical to any company's health and well being nowadays.

In this post, I want to focus on two of these implications:

1) The longer a company takes to solve a problem, the more likely customers are to internalize and personalize and escalate
2) Customers (more often than not) will choose to take a problem directly to the source, namely take the "private" route, before outing their battle into the public domain.

In the case of Dave Carroll and his now famous, "United breaks Guitars" story, he gave the airline 6 months to resolve his problem. Six months before he turns to song and viral infamy. In his case, there wasn't a malicious bone in his body, but rather a resigned and final attempt at expressing himself in the most natural and authentic manner he knew how.

In the case of Domino's (with their rogue employees), Target (with their snow angel blogger snub) and most recently, Toyota (with its series of recalls), action was too slow, too weak, too passive, too diluted, too soft, or a combination of the above. It's a fascinating mix of avoidance, denial, delusion, and naivety that a problem will either disappear, dissipate, or just go unnoticed.

It won't and it doesn't. At least not anymore.

Consumers are becoming a lot more savvy than we give them credit for. They know how to get our attention. And they do this by getting a cast of thousands' attention first...via social networks, Twitter, Youtube and a smorgasbord of feeds. And to make sure that this isn't left to chance, they're using the kind of search savvy that would make our shareholders drool -- utilizing the full range of tags, keywords, and links that take the guesswork out of achieving 15-streams of fame.

Bottom line: It is better to be S.A.F.E. than sorry, and this case it means acting swiftly, comprehensively, decisively. Erring on the side of an extreme "spring cleaning" makeover versus sweeping it under the rug.

Chances are someone's going to trip over that festering pile and break their neck. Chances are that someone is going to be you.

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About the Author: Joseph Jaffe is Chief Interruptor of Powered, Inc. and author of Flip the Funnel. He blogs at Jaffe Juice and Powered's blog, The Engaged Consumer.