Beware flying bricks
January 19th, 2009 by Jon Clements
Anyone wondering how NOT to handle a customer confidence crisis online should thank digital storage firm, Seagate, for a recent masterclass.
As reported by Robert Scoble on his blog, the company not only didn’t move quickly enough to fix the problems affecting a batch of hard drives (i.e., the things you rely on so not to lose data you want/need to keep), but then removed critical discussions about the problem from its online forums. Surely if people can’t read about it, then the problem will go away, right?
Well, what did this achieve? It made people even angrier, prompting them to start up online discussions away from the Seagate forum and spreading the negative message like a Californian wildfire. Then the tech blogs get involved and suddenly you’ve got confidence in your product ebbing away.
As Scoble describes it, the problem for your company ends up like “bricks flying through the window”, which tends to make people sit up and take notice.
The weapon Seagate does have in its armoury is good blogger relations with Scoble himself, whose influential blog is acting as part customer service centre for disgruntled Seagate customers and evangelist for their products.
What people are saying online about your company or product matters as the ease with which the information can be shared replicates old fashioned word of mouth, and then some.
Illustration: Anne Marie-Sonneveldt
About Jon Clements
Jon Clements is a Chartered PR consultant specialising in B2B PR, corporate and marketing communications and is the founder of Metamorphic PR. Connect at: JonClements 'Jon Clements'
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