I had the pleasure of many in depth conversations about social media during my short stay in Austin for the SXSW conference. Not only is Austin’s premiere music conference/festival/party a huge draw, but geeks like myself converge on the city for ‘SXSW Interactive’ like we are returning to the nerd mothership.
One of the conversations most relevant to the discussion here was why some sectors just do not get social media. Situations like Adam’s experience with his mum trying to change her car were unfortunately the norm rather than the exception.
During a house party I did a back of a napkin calculation for the reach the people in just that one small room had. It was around a million people, give or take, that combined we could jointly influence. That is first degree connections, so given a good pass-along rate the total reach could be exponentially more.
Consider how fast stories travel on the internet and how few people you need to start a viral fire. Think a million or so could start a big fire?
Companies with bad customer service are in a dangerous position now. The arrogance and lack of empathy would in the past only impact those it directly hurt, and their small circle of friends and family. People did not have much of a choice, especially if they had their heart set on a certain brand. That has changed, and while the customer service has not always improved, the options available to disgruntled customers has.
Really what we are seeing is a clash of cultures. Social media folks are used to the idea of building long term relationships based on mutual like and trust. The person is more important than the sale. Crazy, I know.
When we visit an auto dealer with a sales team who is only out for the ‘kill’, prioritising that short term goal of getting a sale at any cost, even at the expense of a long term relationship and damage to their brand, we get confused, frustrated and angry.
Why are these dealers so short-sighted? The answer is obvious. There is no incentive to act in anything but the salespersons own best interest at the expense of the customer, and by extension the organisation. What you measure you get more of.
If the person dealing with you does not care what you think, does not care who you tell, and is never going to consider the fact that you might want to return to buy something else, what are they going to do?
In the social media world we recommend companies build long-term loyalty, positive word of mouth, and to encourage referrals. We have the goal of a customer for life and as big a share of that customer as possible. We want not only happy and profitable customers, we want them to bring along friends too!
All along we have always known it is better to go by the golden rule. You know, treat others as you would like to be treated. In the race to get sales today and to heck with tomorrow a lot of companies have been burning up their own future, but the customer had little power to respond. Now the tide is shifting in the consumers favor but the dealers do not realise the change has happened already.
Personally, the wise move seems to be to start focusing on the customer and get the worst offenders in your team re-educated. Or you could go through some painful publicity and costly brand damage limitation later. Either is fine, just do not say you were never warned …
