Instantaneous Critics, Identifying, Managing and Resolving Your Online and In-House Reputation.

100. Back in the day this was the average number of people word-of-mouth networking would reach. A customer would tell 7 friends, who would share the story with another 7 friends, and exponentially 100 potential customers would hear about the experience.

1,596,270,108. This is the amount of people online (as of 12/31/09) who have the potential to read your customer’s broadcasted message. Today if a customer has a positive or negative experience in your organization, they can communicate an instantaneous and powerful message via social media that will reach numbers that will cause your head to spin! TripAdvisor alone sees over 322 million unique visitors to their site each month. That’s a lot of people checking out reviews about your brand.

So what is going on? Why should you be concerned? Consumers are having conversations about your brand regardless if you are listening. Social media is generated by consumers through blogs, message boards, product review sites, YouTube videos, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter; the list is ever evolving. Customers routinely use these sites to post great and not-so-great comments about your brand.

If you are doing most everything right in terms of customer service, social media will be an asset to you. If you are not, it could be damaging to your reputation. Today, the customer is finicky and fickle. They want what they want and they will complain when they don’t get it, or have a perception they have been wronged.

Today you have options to engage in a conversation with your customer to learn from their experience, and it is the resolution of the problem that can truly make a difference for your business.

When a customer is parting with their hard earned money, they expect great service, value and a positive experience. When these elements do not work in balance, or parts are missing, the customer will not hesitate to complain to their “virtual friends”.

Take for instance the following customer service story about a customer interaction with CompUSA customer and blogger Terry Heaton, who bought a digital camera from a store's liquidation sale only to find out at home that it was an empty box.

This is the actual series of events that took place online:
· June 2: Terry posts on his blog the response he got from the CEO's office about his empty box problem. A CompUSA exec tells Terry that he should have inspected the box before taking it home and all sales are final. (Never mind that Terry was a longtime CompUSA customer and had spent $3,500 that day at the liquidation sale).
· June 3: The Lost Remote blog writes about Terry's story. 211 people comment.
· June 4: The story is posted to Digg where it's digg'd 2,607 times with 210 comments and rises to the number 2 story in the Digg Business section.
· June 4: The story hits the front page of BoingBoing.
· June 4: CNET.com mentions the story in their video show "The Queue."
· June 4: Over 50 blogs write about Terry's story.
· June 5: Terry finally gets a call from CompUSA apologizing for the situation and promising a $300 gift certificate from the store.
· June 5: Terry's story is on the front page of FoxNews.com, with the caption "Image problem."
(Rock Research Marketing 2008)
All CompUSA had to do to eliminate this social media nightmare was to take care of the problem from the get go! Consumers are taking their frustrations directly to the web, and a lot of people are listening!

Additionally, the customer is evaluating, reviewing and comparing your product (i.e. restaurant, lodging, winery, gaming, retail, and other services) online to help with their purchasing decision.

Here’s some ideas to Identify, Manage and Resolve your online and in-house reputation:

Identify:
· Google your company name. See what is currently being said about your organization on various social media sites.
· Monitor the chatter via products like Tweetscan or GuestPulse to find out what conversations are going on right now on Twitter about your brand.

Manage:
· Take care of your customers and provide a positive guest experience in all that your organization offers.
· Assign someone from your company the crucial responsibility of daily monitoring of social media. Spend time daily on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Industry-specific sites and Blogs, etc.) and address comments immediately. Respond to every online complaint.
· Develop online relationships with your customers.

Resolve:
· Commit to recognizing on a timely basis, the complaint (or accolade). Procrastination is a kiss of death if you ignore or fail to respond/resolve issues raised by your customer.
· Respond publically via social media versus privately through email or letter. If you respond privately instead of publically, customers are going to only see the complaints and not the resolutions!
· Don’t be afraid to post your inadequacies in public, but do have a resolution process in place.

Social media has given a voice to the customer, and has empowered the customer in ways never seen before. The Hospitality industry can no longer dismiss social media as a passing fancy, rather a powerful tool to understand how the customer perceives your brand, service and consumer’s rating compared to your competition. More importantly, social media allows your organization to get on the radar of the consumer for little or no capital.

I’ll be sharing more ideas on how social media is changing the face of customer service at the next Business Success Forum for the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce on April 13th, 12:00 – 1:30pm.

The program, “Instantaneous Critics- Identifying, Managing and Resolving Your Online and In-house Reputation” is free to Chamber members, and lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to Emily@temecula.org.


Jan M. Smith is the Founder and Principal of Inland Management Group, a Human Resource Consultancy located in Temecula, specializing in the Hospitality and Entertainment industry. You can contact Jan at (951) 302-6483, http://www.inlandmgtgroup.com/, email at jsmith@inlandmgtgroup.com, or follow her on Twitter at Temecula_HR, and become a Fan on Facebook at: Inland Management Group