Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

Engage but Don’t Alienate the Customer
December 4, 2007

Marketing experts like to talk about “engagement”; that is, companies should try to keep their customers “engaged.” And yet, if you talk to those customers, they’re more likely to say, “I don’t want to be engaged. I just want to buy something and leave.” While this latter attitude tends to apply to so-called “bricks-and-mortar” locations (after all, who wants to stick around a store longer than they absolutely have to?), the Web has shown that customers are often highly engaged—online discussion forums, blogs and blog comments, social networking, and so forth are all tools that many marketers have successfully implemented to build communities around their products and services as well as “get the word out” to other potential customers.

In its simplest form, this engagement can involve simple product reviews, à la Amazon.com’s book and other product comments. Read through a sampling of these and you’ll find that when sufficiently motivated (either by a really good or really bad product) they are not shy about waxing rhapsodic or wroth. Many of these customer comments can prove quite insightful, and oftentimes are of far more use in evaluating a product than a professional review.

Other attempts at customer engagement involve e-newsletters, invitations to participate in online surveys or forums, and related techniques that have varying levels of effectiveness. After all, we’ve all been party to attempts at engagement that seem less like “building an effective customer relationship” and more like “stalking.” Sending someone a survey every single time they buy something, for example, is a surefire way to make sure they never come back. (This is not to undercut the effectiveness of surveys, goodness knows, but surveying the same people to death is ineffective for a whole host of reasons.)

The whole idea of online engagement is not without its generational limitations. People who have been raised in an online environment tend to be the most active participants in online social and business networking, while older folks still remain rather baffled by the whole idea of things like MySpace or Second Life. It’s really a question of going where the customers are; if they are online, that’s where they need to be engaged.

At the same time, it should be pointed out—as a recent article on customer engagement in Information Week pointed out—that oftentimes online forum commenters are a self-selected sample. They are highly opinionated to begin with and are not likely, as statisticians are fond of saying, a representative sample of the population or customer base.

In the case of a retailer like Amazon, it’s easy for them to treat their comment system with a laissez-faire approach. After all, Amazon sells so many products that they likely don’t care if someone pans a particular book or product. In fact, they likely recognize that not censoring comments (except in the most obvious cases of abuse) gives a certain legitimacy to the proceedings; that is, if only good reviews were provided, who would pay any attention to them?

For other types of companies, such as those that provide very specific products or services, be they b-to-b or b-to-c, the situation can be quite a bit trickier. You obviously don’t want people saying bad things about you on your own forum, but also don’t your forum moderator to come across as Nurse Ratched. You want to facilitate free and unfettered conversations, but you don’t want it to devolve into Lord of the Flies or a series of flame wars. This can be a fine line to walk.

What are some tips to help navigate the often treacherous waters of customer engagement?

• Foster discussion and connectedness. So-called Web 2.0 is about online communities and consumers being active participants and collaborators. Instead of fighting this, embrace it and facilitate it with comment-enabled blogs and solicitations to join discussion forums.
• Don’t censor user-generated content. This is not to say that obscene or highly inflammatory posts shouldn’t be removed. What we mean instead is that gone are the days when a company can precisely control its message. Users will talk and they will sometimes say uncomplimentary things. Use this as an opportunity to address whatever the complaint may be rather than ignoring it or quashing it outright.
• Similarly, don’t have a thin skin. The relative anonymity of the Web means that people will often be more outspoken and brusque (or just plain rude) than they would be if you met them in person (except perhaps in certain parts of New Jersey). As a result, forum comments can be ruthlessly direct and often brutal. Again, use this as an opportunity to address whatever the complaint may be; but be polite and avoid the temptation to stoke a flame war.
• Don’t be a pest. You want to encourage customers to participate but you don’t want to be seen as harassing them to do so. While it’s not true that you can simply build it and they will come, but at the same time you can hound them to participating more than they want to.
• In a related note, take it easy with surveys. Yes, customer feedback surveys can be excellent ways to understand what your customer wants, but surveying the same customer repeatedly will quickly become ineffective, as it may alienate him/her at worst or at best yield deliberately negative and skewed results as the surveys are filled out in a state of frustration and “revenge.” (Or maybe it’s just me…)
• Pay attention to what customers are saying. No, the customer isn’t always right, but often has a point.

It’s impossible to predict how users will respond to attempts at engagement. But the key to marketing today is experimentation. Can these strategies backfire? Absolutely. But so can any other strategy. If one thing doesn’t work, try something else. Nothing is a given, and nothing is certain. This worries some people; this excites others.

Posted by Richard Romano on December 4, 2007 | Comments (0)