I quite enjoy when good debate leads to new thought. Just so happens that was the result of this evening’s Social Media Club NYC event. Midway through the meeting, the room was a buzz with conversation about major corporations’ success with social media or lack there of. Soon, what started out as a conversation recognizing the common pitfalls larger companies find themselves stuck in, became an all out bashing session. People were gnashing their teeth and jumping on tables shaking their fists at each other. One person even brought out a bow staff just in case his fist waving failed to get his point across.
Okay, I exaggerated. A little. But there was some yelling and some harsh words being said. In the thick of it, it hit me. I felt bad for these large corporations.Never have I felt more left of center than in that moment. I’ve always be a perpetual advocate of the underdog, a product of what I like to call”picked last for every team in high school” syndrome. Now my brain was overflowing with thoughts that led to sympathy for these companies and more importantly the people in charge of their Social Media. I feel that if the walls of America’s fortune 500 companies could speak openly about their social media programs, this is along the lines of what they would say:
“Courtney Treebird from Muskingum, AL I understand your pots arrived broken. I saw your tweet about. I also saw that you wrote a blog about it. I know your friend Sherri also wrote about your pots and about a similar problem she had with our brand. I know you then both joined a group on facebook called “I hate brand X.” I want you to know I saw ALL of this. I even told my boss Sam, who forwarded me to Mike who’s in charge of customer satisfaction. Mike referred my to Allison who manages shipping, who told me this was out of her hands and referred me back to Mike. Mike then sent me to Alex who’s the head of digital marketing. She said that she thought our company had someone in charge of requests like yours. A week later she wrote me an email referring me to reach out to myself for help. As you can see, Courtney, I’ve tried to resolve your issues. I’ve tried to reach out to people and make you feel more satisfied with our product. I have. We want you to be satisfied. The problem is, my company is just not quite sure who’s in charge of meeting your needs.”
Classic social media success stories like Jetblue & Zappos have it easy. They’re newer companies and have been able to build customer centrality into their sales model from the get go. Older companies do not have the same advantage and they struggle to bring the same level of service to their customers because of it. To compete they must retrofit a modern customer centric model onto internal working system that just doesn’t cooperate with that way of thinking. So what you are left with is a bunch of people who think service and communication with consumers is important, but no clear leader or process to ensure actual customer needs are met. Even when there is a defined leader in charge of meeting customer needs, that person is not likely to have the power necessary to demand the change needed to meet disgruntled customers needs’. So, what you’re left with is a whole lot of mess.
The only way these companies will be able to overcome this mountain of an issue is to build internal communication that mirrors their outward goal. How do they do this? There’s no simple or easy answer. I suppose it’s what makes their situation even more difficult.
Never did I expect I would find the urge to stand up and fight for the big dogs, but today I did. I ask you to give the big corporations a little bit of a break when is comes to social media. They’re still figuring out how to make it work. They want to catch up. They’re going to make mistakes. The important thing is they are trying and that deserves some credit.
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