The era of customer service
If there's one thing we can glean from the United Break Guitars video story, it's that customers now matter.
Now ask any company and they'll say that customer have always mattered etc. But the reality is the individual consumer didn't have much of a voice four or five years ago.
The analogy I like to use is this. If I had a beef say with my favourite cookie company because of a bad bag of cookies, four or five years ago if I was upset I might compain to the store I bought them. If I was really mad I might complain to the customer contact line. The problem would likely be resolved with a new bag of cookies.
But if the customer service didn't respond well to my concern, I'd have little recourse.
Nowadays if I'm mad and I don't get satisfication from a company I can rant on my blog, post a video to YouTube or chew out the store / company on my Facebook page.
And then my beef becomes a public beef where others can jump on the bandwagon. And then a customer service issue turns into a PR issue and a brand issue.
And that's what's really cool about social media. Is that it is evolving into an effective check against corporate power and indifference to consumers. It turns consumers back into customers and it puts the service back into customer service.
