Last week, I was asked to do an interview for a PR pub about crisis communications in the blogosphere (more on that later). What do you do when a meme comes out with one of your sleeping employees on a customer’s couch? I talked about this a bit in this post, but there’s obviously a lot more to it than just talking to bloggers – though that in itself is a good start.
If you look at the big negative memes that have come out over the past couple of years – Comcast’s sleeping cable guy, AOL’s customer service guy who wouldn’t let a customer cancel his service, or the "Dell Hell" posts that have been cropping up, they all have one thing in common: they’re a negative result of a company’s inaction or unwillingness to change.
Studies are saying that CEOs are increasingly viewing blogs as a threat. This is a very naive way of looking at the situation - like saying that radar guns are a threat to driving. The real threat is not listening to customers complaints – if anything, blogs make that easier. You are now empowered to listen to your customers’ conversations by simply subscribing to an RSS feed. When you start hearing negative buzz, you can now act on it instantly.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says "I’m going to ruin Dell’s reputation today." A blogstorm starts as a drizzle – a leak that becomes a flood. React quickly, address the problem before it becomes a bigger one, and chances are you’ll never have to worry about dealing with a major blog backlash that can potentially overflow into mainstream media.
