In Social Media and the Power of Word-of-Mouth I briefly mentioned that Bigpond now have an established presence on Twitter.
Bigpond are just one of many companies who are on the front foot when it comes to defending their product online. They monitor Twitter for tweets of discontent, respond to disenfranchised bloggers, and create their own fan pages on Facebook. Essentially they are proactively using social media as a tool to defend their brand image, increase customer satisfaction, and perhaps even gain some positive publicity in the process.
On some level I think this is a fantastic idea – word of mouth now has unprecedented levels of reach and influence and companies should be more diligent than ever when it comes to keeping customers happy.
But I can’t help but feel that they might be crossing the line in some way. A fanpage is one thing because no one is forcing me to join, but do we really want companies responding to rants which aren’t personally directed towards them?
While some people may enjoy the attention, I’m not so sure I would. I’m the kind of the guy that walks into a department store and likes to browse in my own time without the clerk asking “do you need any help?”. I don’t like that sort of pressure. Quite simply, If I want help I’ll ask and this is much the same. Companies needs to respect our privacy and part of that is our right to vent.
Sure, we want our complaints resolved but I don’t think this borderline intrusive method is the answer. In my opinion, they would be much better served by responding online only to those customer queries which are personally adressed towards them. They can still utilise social media to defend their brand, but do so from a distance. A Facebook fanpage or a company Twitter account specifically set up for this purpose presents a much less invasive solution.
