Caveat Emptor, Maybe. What's Latin for Seller Beware?

Phoning customer service is useless, writing complaint letters a waste of time. Taking your grievances to the Internet? Perfect.

Surely, you've seen the job ads for firms who use blogs as a public relations tool to push their products and/or services. They pay "writers" to flog their product and/or services on blogs where professionals and decision makers might read them. Maybe "pay" isn't an accurate term. Still, these companies are using the Internet beyond just an informational or a glitzy website.

Some companies very well may need to post to every B2B and B2C blog they can to offset nasty commentary on angry customers' websites.

Get a customer mad enough and s/he will tell everyone they know. And these days that doesn't mean a few friends sitting around a dinner table on Saturday night, or a handful of buddies at the pub.

Sure, you can post a long, detailed explanation on your personal webspace, but how many visitors will see it? A few family members. Maybe a search engine will find those few keywords in your rant. Were you sure to include the company name's and product?

If you want to complain online, there's an effective and quicker way to spread the word.

Get a customer mad enough and they use social networks to tell hundreds and hundreds of people how the company did them wrong. Remember that shampoo ad from the 1970s? ... she'll tell two friends and she'll tell two friends and so on and so on and so on ... well ...

On a social network, simply posting a note online about your dissatisfaction means that your friends are updated instantly by the activity on your account and boom! the word is out.

Invite them to comment on the note and if they do, their friends are instantly updated.

Within hours, the word is out on the condo developer, or the "game-changer" kitchen and bath place. Within days, the troubles with your car dealership is known by hundreds, or thousands of friends, friends of friends, and friends of those friends.

By simply investing 15 minutes on your Facebook, or MySpace page, you never have to sit on in a phone queue waiting for a surly, bored, twenty-something to sigh while you try to gain resolution to whatever consumer problem ails you.

So, hang up the phone, put away your IBM Selectric. Close the WordPerfect app. There's an easier and faster way to get companies to pay attention to their customers.

Comments

[vb]

Is that true, Brian? It sounds reasonable ... vendor ... but I'll have to check with Laurence Cutler over at Past, Present, and Future. Thanks for the tip!

[Brian in NY]

In Latin, "Let the seller beware." would be, "caveat venditor".