Yes blogs are great at doing certain things, but adding a blog to your communication's mix isn't a panacea, sometimes a blog can easily expose your lack of communication and customer relations skills.
Blogs and other social media tools need to be part of a culture shift within an organization. Perhaps to restate this in the form of a question, are you adding a blog to become more open in your communication, or because you are open in your communication?
Often with corporate blogs (or corporate associated blogs) it's one person making a difference. Yes it's great that a 'company' is 'listening' and 'joining the conversation' but it's not really the company it's a few people (if that). We all applaud when Dell or Southwest starts to blog, but how has that changed the other 99% of touch points we have with the company?
Shel Holtz really captures this with his recent post about Dominos Pizza.
Are companies that start to blog, but don't change their entire philosophy just setting themselves up for failure?
Hear me out on this. Company A (think cell phone company) has a really great, personable blogger that really connects with customers online. However Company A also has about 1000 call center reps and 20,000 associates in the field. The majority of them have the traditional corporate attitude, i.e. "Not my department" - "I can't help you, call customer support" etc...
Dealing with this great blogger has set my expectations high, dealing with anybody else in the corporation is just a nightmare. Inevitably the majority of the comments and issues the corporate blogger deals with are negative customer service experiences. Wow, sounds like a fund job...oh wait, that's not their department :-)
I can't tell you how many times I've had initial client meetings and told them there is now way they're ready to blog. Sometimes it's legal issues, but the majority of the time it's because they just don't have the right corporate culture.
Visitor Comments
Hi Josh
Thoughtful and well put comments about companies and the need to be "on the same page" so to speak. However, think there are also several other scenarios that are not as clear cut or easy to judge, as the picture you paint....and ones, where we dont want to discourage movement forward.
For example, Fortune had a great interview with Michael Dell where he talks about turning "upside down" our approach to customer support...from how many calls teams deal with to solving the customer issue and getting a resolution to the problem the first time the customer calls for support. At the same time, he talked about making it easier to reach Dell.
You can find Laura Bosworth's discussion and blog posts on some of our changes openly discussed on direct2dell.com. We are undertaking massive internal, technological and corporate process changes; we are investing more than $150 million in just a couple quarters to retrain staff and hire additional people; we have launched new tools like Dellconnect; we have launched our corporate blog; and we have a team reaching out to address issues in the blogoshere. We annnounced "Dell 2.0" an initiative internal to the organization but completely focused on revitalizing direct customer relationships and the benfits Dell brings to and learns from those 1:1 relationships.
We are seeing results and starting to turn a corner. We have shorter hold times for customers; 10% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and several other positive indicators.....and I mention all of that to say, we don't get it right 100% of the time. No one ever does.
Besides imperfection, I bet there are lots of situations where companies could be given the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps they have embarked on series of changes, not all of which have taken hold. Some changes may be experiments to see what works best for customers. And some just take a while to work their way through to become embedded and part of the corporate culture.
Therefore, think we should be careful about jumping to conclusions and remember that we want to encourage the customer connection and forward movement, even if its less than perfect.
Posted by: RichardatDELL | January 11, 2007 5:41 PM
To a point, I completely agree with you, Josh. But I'll also throw in an additional bit of this discussion.
I don't think it's about blogging, per se. It absolutely is about cultural change.
Let's think about a teenager learning to drive. As a first step, you don't ever give them the keys to the car. They have to go through classes, get a learner's permit, drive with parent for a while, have restricted access to a car, then finally get a car of their own.
But all the while, the parent responsible for that teen has faith that the direction the teen is headed is a good one, and despite stalls, scares, and maybe even a few minor scrapes, the parent knows it's the future and supports the learning efforts.
Blogging is a tactic. Company employees showing up at offline fan events is a tactic. Involving outsiders in product design is a tactic. But without the belief that it'll all turn out in the end, none of that matters.
Posted by: Jake McKee | January 17, 2007 3:27 PM
Hi Josh,
I am wondering if you have some examples of large corporations who have ventured into the social media space and have failed. I am looking to find real examples in order to learn from mistakes made. My company is about to embark in the Online Community space and I want to make sure we are set for success.
Thanks in advance,
Kristina
Posted by: Kristina | April 16, 2007 1:52 PM