CHAPTER TEN

Staying Connected to What Is Happening Online

You can’t avoid running into some problems with the online world. With the advances in social media, the barrage of new applications created daily, and the growing use of the internet, this is the reality of our contemporary world. It’s like skating on a frozen pond: some places the ice is thick and many places extremely thin. A few strategic actions you can take will help you navigate this new world we now live in:

Continuously Check

There are dozens of ways to check what is said daily about you and your business. Some are simple, such as setting up a Google Alert. Every time a specific phrase, such as your name or a new product your company is introducing to the world, is found on the internet, Google will forward it to you as often as you like. If you are in the hospitality industry, continuously check all the platforms that sell hotel rooms and provide space for customers to leave comments. There can be many of these sites, depending on your business category. Available social media monitoring software programs are also useful. These programs are constantly changing, so search online for “social media monitoring” tools to find the most up-to-date ones since new categories are regularly being added. Check for ones that best suit your needs. You'll find tools for marketers, monitoring tools for specific industries, programs that are free, tools for social media managers, and the top monitoring software programs for small businesses, among others. It’s a burgeoning field. Some software programs search through millions of blogs, hundreds of thousands of message boards, and thousands of traditional media sources and produce summaries for you.

Many websites attempt to limit communication to a specific group of people. Still, anyone with a computer can find what has been written. Once it’s on the internet, it’s there for everyone, in most cases, forever. Customer complaints are discussed, and opinions are diverse about anything related to a business. One financial information company took it perhaps a step too far. Whenever this organization found anything negative on the web about it, it threatened legal action. The company looked like a big bully, stifling independent evaluation when word got out about its behavior. The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate negative feedback; it’s to be aware of it so you can respond to it. Shutting down online complaints on the internet doesn’t stop the discussion.

Businesses can get back to a customer to minimize damage as soon as the post is discovered by monitoring various sites. A good example happened with Virgin Trains, a UK train operator. It appears that a teenager using an onboard restroom discovered there was no toilet paper. He pulled out his cellular phone and tweeted a clever comment about Virgin Trains falling down in service with no toilet paper in the trains. He also sent it to his Virgin Trains account. Someone in the corporate offices immediately saw the tweet and messaged the train’s engineer that someone needed toilet paper in Coach J. The engineer ran down the train with a roll of toilet paper, knocked on the identified toilet door, and said, “Sir, here’s your toilet paper.”

The teenager then tweeted, “Can we please take a moment to thank the best train-service provider.” A Virgin spokesperson continued the conversation: “It just goes to show the true power of social media, hopefully a bit of inspiration for other companies to get themselves on Twitter and start engaging with their customers. At Virgin Trains we work really hard to respond to our customers quickly, to make sure they get the information or help they need—whatever the request! We recognise that we’re all human and if we can brighten a customer’s journey and be a little cheeky along the way, all the better. We saw (our passenger) was in a crisis and helped him finish what he started.” Cheeky, indeed.¹

This is a great example of how a viral message about Virgin Trains can start as a negative comment and end up providing positive publicity. The story made it to the Daily Mail. Companies that are constantly checking online may find a large number of their customers who are so introverted that complaining online is the easiest way for them to complain. They may find a whole group of customers to talk with that they had never connected to in the past, bringing them into direct communication with the organization.²

An analogy I am fond of is denying information from getting to you would be the equivalent of early Native Americans refusing to place their ears to the ground to hear distant hoofbeats. The rumbling sounds, or silence, provided valuable clues as to what to do next, and no one would ever have thought about cutting off this source of information.

Create Confidence

Tempting as it may be to go online anonymously and defend your organization or in some way attempt to influence the market, don’t even consider it. Fake reviews are illegal and violate the terms of service of all business review sites. Getting caught can be disastrous. You can get a Suspicious Review Activity sign posted on your business, and your business listing may get suspended. In the United States, you can also be assigned hefty fines by the Federal Trade Commission. In this sense, it’s no different than cooking your books when your numbers look bad. It turns out there are even dozens of online companies that, for a price, will create fake reviews.³ Is this a risk you want to take? Facebook, in the early 2020s, is facing a severe reputation problem. The Economist says it is nearing a reputational point of no return and risks joining untouchables like the tobacco industry.⁴

An example that rocked Whole Foods happened when John Mackey, CEO, posted statements under Rahodeb (an anagram of his wife’s name, Deborah).⁵ He praised Whole Foods while denigrating rival Wild Oats, an organic grocery store Whole Foods was attempting to buy. It’s a long and complicated story, but the lesson remains—don’t do it.

It’s too dangerous to do anything that risks ruining the reputation of your well-established and valuable organization. Specifically, this means it’s not a good idea to assign staff the responsibility of finding negative comments about your organization on the web and then writing something positive without indicating they are from inside your organization. At some point, these people might leave disgruntled and report they were forced to substitute positive statements about the company when finding negative comments. News reporters love stories like that.

The web is an ongoing conversation. If someone were lying to your face, that wouldn’t be good. Any hint of pretense or fabrication does not create confidence and is also wrong on the internet, where these conversations can stay posted for years. The most hard-nosed reality is that eventually the truth comes out in these situations.

Conduct Conversations

One of the most effective ways to respond to dissatisfied customers is to engage in honest conversations. Such conversations can be held on your own websites or internet platforms. A well-handled online complaint should increase confidence in the business’s ability to handle service failures. Remember, complaints are gifts because they help us improve.

Website builders that enable easy blogging are rated by users on Google, Capterra, G2, and Apple’s App Store. The top website designers offering these services in late November 2021 do not encourage responding to all negative reviews online. They recommend the business ask the person writing the complaint to contact it directly where a genuine in-depth conversation can occur. If the customers reach the designer and resolve their issues, they likely will stay with that designer. One of the realities of online reviews is highly competent individuals post reviews. It forces all web designers to pay attention to competitors to see users’ wants. Potential customers shopping for a website application company will likely read about the most recognized web builders and probably start a conversation with them.

When in a genuine conversation, customers writing on blogs, in the comment sections, or on other websites designed to create an electronic discussion can alert companies to problems in the same way they do with verbal complaints. You lose credibility if you guide your customers to a website with anything less than a real conversation. Just as customers in person ask the question of companies, “Why don’t you . . .?” they now do it on the internet. Except now, the conversation is being listened in on by thousands of people.

One way to help guide traffic to a few locations instead of being spread out, where it is difficult to monitor, is by posting a robust blog on your website. Bloggers who study the phenomenon of communicating with the public encourage you not to treat your blogs like a public relations or marketing exercise. You have to carry on conversations as if you were there live with those customers—which is not so different from a live complaint coming at you fast and furious. This requires you to tailor your remarks (speak to what they are talking about); be specific (listen carefully so you can refer to their issues); and be fast—“I’m going to help you or respond as quickly as I can.”

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association found that 78 percent of bloggers say they read blogs, and 31 percent consider them credible places to talk with bloggers in their comments sections.⁶ Alec Saunders, former Microsoft manager, gives this advice, still good fifteen years after he first made it: “Good heavens, people! Get a grip! You don’t need a cozy little exclusive club to figure out what to do with blogs. Just get on the net, start talking to your customers and advocates, and start interacting with people outside the strictures of twentieth century command and control marketing.”⁷

Once customers are at your website, make it easy for them. Make sure all your CSRs spend time on your company’s website so they are conversant with the full range of what bothers and excites your customers. Make sure a telephone number (if you want people to call you) is on every page of your site. Nothing is more annoying than reading branding messages about a business wanting to communicate with customers and then spending considerable time tracking down a phone number. Remember, the second part of the Gift Formula is to fix the problems or improve your offerings.

Also, make it easy for customers to find where they can provide feedback. Some websites hide their feedback pages, perhaps because they are afraid of a storm of complaints. They call them something other than complaints, such as “customer service management,” “accounts reconciliation,” or even “information hotline.” Jagdip Singh, at Case Western Reserve University, believes it should be obvious to consumers where to go when they have complaints. I agree.⁸

Recognizing “customer service management” as the place to complain is not likely to attract someone who is already alienated from the marketplace. Some websites use a combination of words, such as complaints, compliments, complications, challenges, or confusion. Such a word choice enables customers to complain while identifying themselves as confused or challenged. It’s good to remind ourselves that customers don’t like to see themselves as complainers. Allow them to call themselves something else if they choose while still providing them the opportunity to give you a gift.