Eight weeks ago I moved into a brand new house. This meant no phone line, and so more importantly, no internet. With both myself and my husband working in online marketing, no internet is a BIG DEAL.
Simple you’d think – just ring up, get an engineer out and get connected…. right?
Not remotely so. I’ll spare you the details, but after eight weeks, multiple unpaid days off to wait for an engineer, and a huge number of hours spent on hold to customer service call centres, we still have no internet.
With nowhere to turn, being the creative people we are, we decided to fight back digital style! Armed with an iphone with a very slow internet connection, we spread one blog post social media style to anyone and everyone we thought could possibly respond – the idea being to get someone at the company noticing us and at the very least apologising.
It’s only been a very short amount of time since the blog post went up and was shared via social networks. So far there has been a response from the MD of Customer Services via Twitter, and several other people from the company have been contacting us, panicked about the bad publicity. People are adding to our efforts by joining in and sharing their own bad experiences with this particular company.
So far, it’s a resounding success.
The point of the above is simple. Don’t overlook the awesome power of what digital marketing can do. Consumers with nowhere to turn can now get themselves heard over the internet in a multitude of ways – from tweeting the MD of a well known company to ensuring their voice is seen by millions of google searchers by getting a small website to rank at the top of google. One single blog post can turn heads and change minds – just think what this power can be translated to for a business….
For companies who already have a great internet presence, the lesson here is to be be on top of your social media – the tweets slamming the customer service are available for all to see, and the quick response we’ve had indicates just how bad this kind of negative comment is for a brand.
So as I high-five myself and get all ‘power to the people’, I’m reminded that the internet and the skills needed to manipulate really are fascinating things. Forgive me for coming over a bit Disney, but digitally speaking, right now I really feel like nearly anything is possible…..