Reviews are golden these days. Consumers have the power to praise or destroy brands by giving them one star or 5 stars based on experiences and interactions. If you tweet or blog about a problem, the likelihood of getting a response from a customer service rep on social media has increased by far over the past year. I can go on and list examples, but you can also look for them on Google. (Kevin Smith Southwest search term is a good start)
By putting your company and brand out there, you immediately open yourself up to comments, feedback and everything else the consumer will say. You have to be ready to take it all in. I'm a strong supporter of this and recommend that our clients put themselves out there and interact with their customers. We've seen great success, fixed problems before they became bigger and gained some great followers and brand ambassadors for them.
But, as wel always need to do: Let's look forward for a minute. Will we hit a point where enough is enough? Do we think that the day will come when brands will say "I'm done" and take down all customer service presence in social media because the reviews and customer service questions and rants become too much?
Review site Yelp has been under scrutiny lately for a lawsuit claiming that Yelp salespeople call small businesses that have been reviewed on the hugely popular business review site, and offer to let them manipulate the reviews if they pay to advertise with Yelp. A recent BusinessWeek interview with CEO Jeremy Stoppelman includes points to clear that up and provided for a brilliant quote at the end of it questioning the same thing I am.
BW: Danny Sullivan, a respected search industry analyst, thinks the only solution is for Yelp to let companies opt-out entirely. That way, only basic information on the company would appear, but no reviews. What not do this? It would go a long way towards proving to businesses that you’re not interested in extorting them.
Stoppelman: Why doesn’t BusinessWeek let me opt-out of having a story written about me? It’s a new generation of people out there (that want to communicate and share opinioins). Some of the content that appears on Yelp might have been created by a newspaper in the past—-say, a review by a restaurant critic. It’s a clear question of free speech. If someone said a reviewer couldn’t write about a particular restaurant, there would be an outcry—how dare he be silenced!
I don't think the opt out trend will happen anytime soon as some companies are just now starting to jump on the response bandwagon. They still see that need, and so do we, that the benefit to doing this is huge and worth the investment. That said, we have to be ready and figure out what will be next.
What do you think?
