Smartphones and washing machines that explode have driven their manufacturer, Samsung, to “reach out to customers through ‘direct communications, customer service, social media, marketing and in-store communications.'”
That’s seems a prudent action in dealing with a crisis and it is likely that Samsung had a prepared crisis plan at the ready in a three-ring binder sitting on the shelf somewhere in its legal department. The list of companies facing similar crises — think Volkswagen, Wells Fargo and United Airlines — likely also had color-coded plans at the ready.
But at a time when customers can coalesce to criticize companies’ when even legal actions can be seen as unfair or rise as one when a misstep is actually malicious, a “crisis event” may be the wrong metaphor for protecting corporate reputation and maintaining customer loyalty.
Criticism and questions come at companies from every angle, with varying degrees of intensity, every day. Most days, thanks to the distributed and decentralized nature of the Internet, companies that are the subject of the ire may not know either all that is being said or right away.
Every day. That is the new metaphor for dealing with the comment and criticism that if left unanswered can, as seismic shaking presages an earthquake, lead to an acute crisis.
Sure, restaurants, retailers and dentists can keep an eye on Yelp.com for signs of discontent, but by then what’s been posted is already, by definition, viral. In much the same way, HR departments pay after-the-fact attention to Glassdoor.com. Same with the focus given TravelAdvisor.com by the travel and tourism trade.
But in each case, companies are merely waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Why not get out in front of it? Why not solicit the criticism? Why not engage with consumers in a way that lets them know you are willing to admit (and fix) mistakes?
According to WhoIs records, Samsung has had control of www.samsung.sucks for about a year-and-a-half. In all that time, it has been on the shelf when it could have been deployed as a way for Samsung to say, “Hey, we know we won’t always get it right. Tell us about it. We’ll fix the problem or correct the record.”
And it is not as if there haven’t been early warning signs of customer discontent well before the current “crisis.”
As customers, we know the companies we keep are not perfect. But we are not sure they do. This is what adds froth to the criticism when it does come and CEOs, like Wells Fargo’s Stumpf, seek to place the blame elsewhere.
When a company is willing to listen, perhaps even cultivate the worst that can be said about it, like Lagunitas Brewing, customer loyalty rises.
At the very least, if Samsung had (still can, really) made a commitment to cultivating customer criticism, there would be less need to spend money on preparing a crisis plan to be kept on a shelf until after the fact.
When www.samsung.sucks resolves, it will showcase the company’s own resolve to building better products and customer relationships.
