The transparent Company - Part 2
Published by Esteban Glas on March 21st, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Business, Web, Web Marketing
Advantages
Who can take advantage of such approach? Customers for starters. I’d be rather happy to see that every interaction is stored, and if things should go wrong that the company publicly posts it’s failure. People would loose that sense of impotence they have after a customer support call gone bad. Even if such would be the outcome people would be a tad unhappier to see that the company acknowledges it couldn’t quite solve things. On the other hand it would force support teams to become more efficient, treat customers better and actually try to solve issues.
The advantages for the company come hand in hand with trust. If you trust a company to be honest, even what it makes them looks bad, in a sense, customers become more loyal, since there is a relationship based in mutual honesty.
A side advantage to the approach would be reducing costs in support. Reducing costs? how come? if help desks are under the public scrutiny one would expect them to have more personnel to give better support. That might be the case, but you might forget the fact that with the public support cases a knowledge base might be built, and common issues solutions would be out there for everyone to see. I am a particularly “do it yourself” type of guy, so I usually search the web, forums, and blogs for ways to solve whatever issue arises it is only if I can’t solve something on my own that I call in for help. I know there are plenty of people who act this way as well. If given a proper tool, (this knowledge base could be just one of many, I’ve already mentioned how forums would help as well in the past), many people wouldn’t call unless they had real issues.
Disadvantages
The downsides come also from the hand of customers. Although most people, most of the time are good, there are other cases which could provoke some “false negatives” on the system.
On the other hand there is the issue of privacy, and how to handle that. On the introduction I mentioned how each customer should agree to have it’s case displayed or not, and even if displayed a lot of data should be hidden (such as contact information, even the serial numbers of products, and other things) to avoid people faking they are some other customer, spam and other enjoyable annoyances of on-line world.
Altogether, if privacy is handled properly the advantages outnumber the disadvantages, and the gain in public perception should be more than enough to try such approach.Another thing that must be taken into account is the legitimacy of things. People are suspicious by nature, look at comments on most corporate blogs, when people rant, they usually start “I don’t know if this will ever be posted” or “let’s see how long this comment stays visible”. In order to gain confidence and for the program to be actually transparent, all data displayed should be a honest reflection of things going on; even when they might seem negative, the public perception effect should balance this.
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March 21st, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I think a lot of those public ‘dares’ come from people who know they should write something different but don’t. Also, it’s a psychological ploy dating back to the school yard - I dare ya, oh yeah, well I double dare you….
Social media has given customers a voice, and generally no responsibility for what they write. Like first year kids away at college, it’s self empowerment and freedom. With some experience, by the second year, most have learned the ettiqutte and don’t feel the need to threaten or bully in order to be heard.
In time, I think companies and customers will look to form partnerships and look beyond basic transactions. That is the basis of a brand relationship. It only makes sense if the customer wants to invest with the brand, as Krista did with BMW, and if the brand understands the long term value not just in terms of rep-purchase, but referrals and testimonials. This drives awareness and consideration in others, and is something the company doesn’t have to spend $ to otherwise aquire. It’s all part of a larger business model.