Chris Anderson, Wired magazine editor and writer of the book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, was in a discussion with the staff of Universal McCann concerning the book.
In her Just an Online Minute segment, she wrote of Andersons' comments concerning he thinks that customers may be becoming too powerful - to the point of destroying the goodwill of a company.
She says: "For instance, he said, one negative consumer review on Amazon can outweigh an outpouring of favorable opinions by professionals. Or, he proposed, consider Jeff Jarvis, who caused Dell Computer no end of problems with the "Dell hell" blog post, detailing his problems with the company."
Wendy disagrees with that...and so do I. I've seen numerous attempts by consumers to bad-mouth companies and their experiences with them, and have found there are many times just as many people defending the company as not. In effect they put each other in check.
When something really does take hold and go viral in a negative way, usually it's deserved by the poor behavior of the company over and over again. In other words, it's a pattern that has continued over a long period of time.
If a company is doing things pretty good on constant basis, no amount of word-of-mouth will take hold and bring down the reputation of the company. For those that don't adapt and adjust to customer complaints...they will find themselves wishing that customers weren't as powerful as they've become.
Power for consumers is good as it keeps companies more diligent and on their toes to make sure they're doing things to the best of their ability on a consistent basis.
Do you have any concerns about the growing influence of consumer
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