I have been reading about Comcast and their great initiatives through Twitter and the latest article in NYTimes when it comes to responding to customer complaints on blogs and social networks, and am VERY happy to see that they are putting the efforts towards monitoring positive and negative word of mouth.

I must say, I was surprised by some folks reaction such as “Comcast is watching us” or “big brother is watching us”, as I truly believe that if someone blogs, twitters/tweets, “facebooks” it is to share it with the world, and I assume also means a “cry for attention”. So to that end, I am surprised that such bloggers wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to have a two way conversation with the same company they were complaining about.

We have been encouraging our clients such as Sutter Home Winery/Trinchero Family Estates, Wells Fargo, eBates, Plantronics and others to listen to positive and negative word of mouth, and engage in conversations – to:
- In aggregate to understand if positive or negative word of mouth are increasing or decreasing
- Best understand the needs and expectations of customers, and see if the company can or cannot address their issues
- Feed that information back into:

1) customer service – to address the issue(s) on a company wide basis and stem potential additional negative word of mouth
2) product management – to address the issue(s) at the root
3) product development – to see if future products/services can be improved upon before they are launched to the market
4) sales and marketing – so that customer pain points (and hopefully solutions) can be used to attract new customers

Do read our previous blog entry on how to engage in two way conversations with your customers. Otherwise, I command Comcast and other companies for trying to engage with customers.

Why should a company care to do that? Well, reducing negative word of mouth is 3x more efficient than increasing positive word of mouth (which in our opinion too many companies and agencies are doing now), see the facts from a study by Harvard Business Review and London School of Economics here:

• 7% increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1% additional company growth
• 2% reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1%
• For the average company, a 1% increase in word of mouth advocacy equated to $16M extra sales
• 1% reduction in negative word of mouth for the average company resulted in $49M in additional sales

Source: London School of Economics, Harvard Business Review

An amazing example that we bring to many of our clients’ attention is xda-developers.com and the massive amount of conversations that developers (and consumers) engage in about cell phones around the world. Xda-developers.com has 1,834,353 posts, more than 900,000 worldwide members. What’s really encouraging about this community is that representatives from a large number of cell phone companies are there to respond to concerns, questions, etc.

Again, why should a company care to answer silly questions asked by customers in forums….forums by nature are there to stay, the more popular (e.g. xda-developers.com) the forum, the more likely is the complaint/issue to show up in the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Try it now, go to Google and search for “att tilt ringtone bluetooth issue” or “att tilt ringtone issue” or “att tilt home screen issue” (I tried very simple issue that “could” happen, and found all these).

Other companies like HTC (the maker of AT&T’s Tilt, and many other great smartphones) and others, should take note, and start engaging now, otherwise, negative comments will eat at their margins/sales.

Related posts:

1. Afraid of Social Media Marketing? Don’t be, dive in now – your organization will benefit