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What #maytag & @dooce says about customer service in America… and it’s NOT good

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Earlier this week, a customer service nightmare erupted for Maytag when popular blogger Heather Armstrong, “dooce,” tweeted her frustration with the company’s service, or lack thereof,  to her one million plus Twitter followers.

The incident raised more than a few issues, from whether celebrities have a greater responsibility for restraint in their use of social broadcasting tools like Twitter, to just what IS wrong with customer service in this country. We’ll take each of these in turn, but before you read my analysis, if you aren’t familiar with the tale, read these posts:

The Celebrity Effect

It’s a well-known fact. Celebrities get better customer service than the rest of us. If Caroline Kennedy, Oprah or Madonna called Maytag customer service, they probably would have had a better outcome than Heather Armstrong, even if the telerep were in Bangalore not Brooklyn. There’s real-world celebrity, and there’s web celebrity, and the reality is very few web celebrities cross that chasm.The digerati know who we, and they are, but the public at large, no.

As a result, corporate policies and processes are still trying to catch up with the effect of the web, and the social broadcasting tools at our disposal. They don’t have a good answer for Heather Armstrong or Dave Carroll (United Hates Guitars) because they don’t understand how online influence works.

Here’s the scary reality: a little influence and a good story is enough. Sure, Heather Armstrong’s one-million followers made it happen faster but even someone with far fewer followers can precipitate a customer service nightmare.

Yet, most customer service organizations are still operating under a policy that doesn’t understand the impact of social networks. I completely understand not wanting to respond to “blogger blackmail” but increasingly by the time there is more proof, it’s the VP of Customer Service and the CMO dealing with the problem, not the line.

Social networks give us all far more influence than we had before. Our words are amplified.

Responsibility and influence

Does that mean we have to exercise greater care with our online influence? I think yes. While I understand the frustration that leads to TWEETS IN ALL CAPS, Twitter is like the game of Telephone. Unlike a blog post, in which we can explain, a tweet starts with only 140 characters, and as it is retweeted, original meaning can be lost. Even if we link a post, the original link can be lost.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to tweet about customer service frustrations. We are. It does mean we have to weigh our influence before we speak, and do our best to tell the story, not just vent. Whether we have a one million Twitter followers or merely a few thousand.

We also need to collectively guard against the mob mentality. Sure, we can sympathize with a fellow blogger, but the Twitter pile-on can be a bit excessive.

Think. Before you tweet. Before you retweet. Before you respond.

The fundamental customer service problem

At the end of the day, no one should be so frustrated with customer service that they feel they need to tell 100 or 1 million of their (closest) Twitter friends. Yet it happens everyday. If it did not, @dooce’s fans would not have been so ready to jump on the maytag-hating bandwagon. It isn’t just that they love her, and she had a problem. They can identify. They’ve had a customer service nightmare too.

We know from research conducted by the Society for New Communications Research  that people are increasingly willing to share their customer service experiences online. We also make purchase decisions based on the experiences of others.

That, combined with anecdotal evidence like the #maytag twitterstorm, would indicate that it is well past time for companies to develop a better response to online criticism than “sorry” and throwing tons of resources at high profile problems.

Even better, why not anticipate, and avoid, potential problems. You know, with better customer service.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Social media karma

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It’s time to make a few deposits in the social media karma bank.

The past few weeks, I have been consumed with Blog with Integrity, my book proposal and getting ready for my vacation to Africa next month. In the process, a number of interesting projects and initiatives from my marketing, PR and social media friends have piled up in my “must blog about that” pile.

Former Bostonian Aaron Strout was kind enough to ask me to be a guest on his podcast, along with Brian Morrissey of AdWeek and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, to talk about Facebook Connect. Take a listen. Enteprise web and community managers, you should definitely check out Aaron’s company Powered. They are doing some neat things with enterprise level communities and Facebook Connect.

In my role as an SNCR Fellow, I was privileged to conduct a social media workshop for Goodwill Industries International at their summer national learning conference in Grand Rapids Michigan. The students were great, and really invested in figuring out how to make social media work for their communities. I was already impressed with what the Goodwills were doing with social media, and am looking forward to even greater things in the future.

If you have old clothes and other goods, please consider making the effort to donate them to Goodwill. Your donation doesn’t just fund charitable programs, it funds programs devoted to putting people to work. In these economic times, that literally doubles your money.

My SNCR colleagues Don Bulmer of SAP and Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks are conducting a research study called  The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks. They are interested in the the use of social networks as a tool in the enterprise and part of the decision making process. Please check out the website for more information and if you fit the profile, please consider taking the survey.

Janey Bishoff and the team at Bishoff Communications are helping Boston ad exec Jeff Freedman’s non-profit Small Army for  a Cause raise funds for cancer research in memory of Jeff’s late partner Mike Connell. They are holding a fundraising event on September 17th called Be Bold Be Bald!

Participants will wear bald caps on the 17th to raise funds and awareness of a major challenge faced by cancer patients, losing their hair. More information at beboldbebald.org

Chris Brogan’s book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, co-authored with Julien Smith, went on sale at Amazon today to a very positive reception. Congratulations Chris! I promise to read it when things slow down.

Finally the SXSW Panel Picker went live today. Once I sort out all the various panels from friends and colleagues, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m cross-eyed trying to figure it all out from the tweets. If enough panels from people I know make the cut, I might even make the effort to go this year.

the one about badges and integrity

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Eventually, I will share my thoughts on BlogHer ’09 and report on a terrific breakfast meeting I had during BlogHer with Beth Smits and Erin Bix of Best Buy to learn more about Best Buy’s Women’s Leadership Forum (WOLF).

Today, though I want to talk a little bit more about badges and integrity. As I’ve written before, you don’t need a badge to blog with integrity, and if you don’t have integrity, slapping a badge up on your blog isn’t going to magically give it to you.  Integrity is a deeply personal thing, and in the context of blogging, a matter between a writer and her readers.

Blog with Integrity, the initiative I co-created with fellow bloggers Liz Gumbinner, Kristen Chase and Julie Marsh, is simply a public statement about how we intend to behave as bloggers.  It’s not prescriptive nor does it attempt to classify blogs by content or policies. It’s a simple code of conduct based on fairly universal principles – respect for others, responsibility for one’s words and deeds, and disclosure of our interests. If bloggers want to display their support of these principles, they can sign the pledge and/or display a badge.

Just as some folks like to display their support for causes and political candidates by wearing buttons and putting bumper stickers on their cars and others do not, some bloggers like badges and others do not. All we can say for certain is that the person wearing the button or the blog displaying the badge supports the cause. It is incorrect to conclude that the absence of same indicates lack of support. Or in the case of Blog with Integrity, a lack of integrity.

Some people don’t like badges. Don’t read more into it.

Is the badge a nice cue about the blog and the blogger? Sure, but it’s not enough, and we never intended it to be viewed as such.

Make your judgment about a blog based on everything presented to you as a reader, not just on whether it displays a badge, and please don’t assume that a blog without the Blog with Integrity badge is somehow “less” than a blog with it.

Such an assumption is in direct conflict with a core principle of Blog with Integrity: there is no one right way to blog.

That includes our own.

Integrity: What it means, why it’s important

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Integrity: the quality of being honest, fair and good

(Oxford English Dictionary)

Nearly two weeks ago, we launched Blog with Integrity. Reception  was overwhelmingly positive. At last check nearly 750 bloggers had taken the pledge.

Bloggers from all spheres agreeing that it is time to reaffirm our commitment to blog with integrity.

The most common critical comment was that bloggers don’t need a badge to blog with integrity.

Which is absolutely true. You don’t need a badge to blog with integrity, and if you don’t have it, no badge on your blog is going to give it to you. What the pledge and the badge do, however, is give us a way to collectively reaffirm our commitment to blog with integrity.

We need to do this now more than ever in the short but eventful history of blogging and online communities.

Not sure yet? Think it doesn’t apply to you because you don’t get swag or product pitches?

Consider this example.

Early last week, a company called The Speaker’s Group issued its top 10 Social Media Speakers list. To a resounding HUH? in the social media community. No women on the list, as pointed out on Twitter by Allyson Kapin, @womanwhotech, and only a few on the list had a significant profile in the social media community, discussed in a post by Geoff Livingston.

On closer look, it seemed pretty obvious that the post was bald-faced promotion for speakers repped by the company without clear disclosure of the relationship. “Our” top ten. Making the list nothing more than promotion. Not illegal, but a bit dodgy.

Subsequently, in the comments to their post, the company did acknowledge the relationships with the various speakers, changed the title of the post to “Ten to Know” and committed to adding women to its roster. In other words, they ‘fessed up, sort of, and promised to do better next time.

But really, shouldn’t they have been more transparent about their relationships from the get-go? Speaking only for myself, I would have more confidence in the company if they had acted with integrity from the start.

Examples like this happen every day, across the blogosphere.

Blog with Integrity is more than a description OF your blog. It is a pledge TO yourself.

To take responsibility for your words. To respect others. To disclose your material relationships. To be honest, with yourself and your readers.

It’s what most bloggers do already. The pledge and the badge are just the tangible symbols that we are part of a community with shared values.

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While we were in part motivated by recent events in the parent blogging community, it has always been clear to us that integrity is an issue for all blogging communities, not just the one currently being singled out in the media for a bizarre combination of damnation and faint praise.

We are glad so many of you agree and grateful for the support. We have some ideas on where we’d like to take the initiative next, but welcome your ideas. If you have suggestions, please email blogwithintegrity@gmail.com, or contact any one of the co-founders — Liz Gumbinner, Kristen Chase, Julie Marsh and me.

Blogola and boycotts and burnout, oh my: Announcing the Blog with Integrity pledge

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BlogWithIntegrity.comIn last week’s post about Facebook fan pages for PR agencies and the Mom Dot PR blackout, I reiterated my strong opinion that the issue isn’t reviews or compensation. It isn’t even burnout or poor blogger outreach, although goodness knows we could stand more than a little improvement on that score.

The real issue facing the blogging community is integrity.

In her excellent post on the blackout at BlogHer, Liz Gumbinner also wrote about the importance of integrity. This didn’t come as a total surprise.

Over the past few months of sturm und drang over FTC guidelines, pay per post and blogola,  four of us — Liz, fellow bloggers and colleagues Kristen Chase and Julie Marsh, and I  — have had an ongoing conversation about the underlying issues of integrity, responsibility and disclosure.

The direct result of that conversation is the Blog with Integrity pledge we are announcing today.

Blog with Integrity was created to provide bloggers with a tangible and collective way to express our commitment to a simple code of blogging conduct. It recognizes that there’s no single right way to blog and more than enough room in the world for different approaches.

What matters is the relationship with our readers. Meeting our commitment to them and to our community. Clear disclosure of our interests so they can evaluate our words. Treating others with respect. Taking responsibility for our words and actions.

We hope you will join us. There’s no cost or complicated application process. Just take the pledge and display the badge.

Read the full pledge on the website, blogwithintegrity.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @BlogIntegrity and on Facebook.

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Oh, by the way, not a parent or personal blogger? Don’t kid yourself, integrity is not just a parent blogging issue. The ethical lapse displayed by TechCrunch when it published the stolen Twitter documents pretty much trumps any pay per post blogger who neglects to disclose.

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Credits: Blog with Integrity logo, badges and website designed by Christine Koh, Posh Peacock. Database code for the Pledge page by David Herrington, Active Oak. We could not have made this happen without their contributions.