Power to the Twitter-er? Are We Seeing a Customer Voice Power Shift?

A great blog by Carol Wolicki entitled "Does Web 2.0 Change Companies’ Ability to…Huh? They Said What?" really got me thinking about the customer voice power shift taking place in front of our eyes. It used to be that very large, profitable customers were the only ones with a direct line of sight to the CEO...and their customer support escalations always climbed the top of the priority list for a CEO or Head of Sales. At the same time, an average very ticked off customer, no matter the level of frustration or misconduct by the company, had no chance of ever reaching the CEO's office (or anyone in the executive suite for that matter) without rounds of verbal jousting with customer service, a few flame emails and possibly a lawsuit threat. This dynamic changes a bit nowadays, when the frustrated customer tweets their gripe to a few thousand of their friends who re-tweet to a few thousand of theirs. All of the sudden, the PR issue this creates can cost a heck of a lot more to the company's time and resources than the single voice in the wilderness by an irate customer before the advent of social networking. Do you think we are we seeing the "voice of the customer" power, shift to twittter-er?

Topics

Customer Service

Marketing

Social Networking

Twitter

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Nick Panayi

asked on Feb. 15, 2010

Pieter Badenhorst

Posted on June 23, 2010

I agree that the client voice is changing but I would also consider that statement based on the clientele. From my experience in the few call centers that I have dealt with it depends on the level of education and accessibility (tools) that is in the clients means. we have seen a few moves from written letters to telephone, fax and then sms followed by e-mail and now Social contacts. In the end, I still think that phone, be it cell or land line will stay the mail voice for clients.