Tag Archives: public relations

Companies That Don’t Understand Social Networking

Business, Social Networking, , , , , , ,

We’ve all heard the story of a major company that totally blew its social networking strategy by doing something really stupid, like tweeting something inappropriate, thinking it would drive business but ended up driving it away instead. But there’s something even worse, at least in my opinion, and that’s a company that wants to engage in social networking but doesn’t understand what engaging in it means. An example is a company that advertises that it has all sorts of hip connections on social networking sites, but then turns around and blocks all of those sites from everyone of its employees. This wouldn’t be so bad if the company didn’t keep sending out notices to employees about how they are now on Facebook, starting up on Google Plus, and then asking employees to participate as well. And when that employee attempts to do so, they get a blocked message, indicating that the job considers that site to be an illegal site for viewing at work.

One of my favorite sorts of erroneous activities involves the housing complex where I live. They put up a bunch of signs around the complex, saying: “Add and Follow us on Facebook for current news and activities!” Four months ago, I attempted to add them on Facebook; they haven’t accepted. Yet, each day I see their signs on the bulletin board at home, just begging me to add them to my Facebook profile.

These are companies that don’t get the whole social networking thing. If you want to engage in social networking, you have to actually engage in social networking. You don’t just get a presence and then expect the masses to come flocking to you, but then decide you don’t want to spend the energy actually working with the environment. The work thing is a no brainer because you’re never going to have a real social networking presence as long as the majority of your staff can’t promote it. If the only Facebook presence you have is a Human Resources person who gets paid to have to maintain the connection, you’ve failed in all things social networking. Basically, it’s a plea to join their network but then a follow up statement to say that your employees aren’t allowed to communicate with the masses you just asked to join. Sure, it keeps people from doing something to embarrass you, but what these companies don’t understand is that social networking is about people, not about people interacting with a company’s icon. That’s why Google is destroying any business presence with Google Plus; at least they understand what a social network should be about. Although, I admit, I suspect they’ll backtrack on that once they realize that Facebook will take advantage of their absence.

Personally, my belief is that any company that avoids letting its employees engage in social networking is doomed to be considered old hat. Any company, like my housing complex, that considers social networking one-way only (we speak, you listen), then they’re doomed to fail as well.

Unfortunately, social networking is one of those animals that takes many years for people to truly understand. And as I’m pointing out, sometimes they never do.

Technology Companies Still Don’t Understand Their Business IS Customers

Business, Technology, , , , , , ,

Sprint PCS is ramping up its engines to try to gain new customers because their managers realize they’re just not cutting it as the third biggest cell phone company. If you looked at them on paper, they’d have everything to sell, such as the only big cell phone service that still offers an unlimited data plan (unless grandfathered in), a great all in one wireless satellite service (Clear Wire), and they’re generally cheaper. So why aren’t they defeating everyone else?

Well, let’s look at that for a moment. I had Sprint, and I currently still have Clear as my additional service. When I had Sprint as a cell phone, the first thing I noticed is that I rarely could get a solid signal. And if I did, I’d lose it. When I went in to complain, the response wasn’t “Oh, we’ll look into that” but “They’re aware of it, and we’re waiting to hear something new”. In other words, they knew they had problems and they did absolutely nothing to fix it. I had Sprint for six months before I gave up on it. When I gave up on it, of course they wanted to charge me they’re punishment fee, even though I was dropping the service because it never worked. A smart company would have said: “You’re right. It’s our fault, so we’ll pick up the charge.” That way, I might look back at Sprint with a sense of “Hey, they at least treated me with respect.” But that’s not how I left.

As for Clear, I like it, but it’s a generally shitty service for the price that I pay. I was using it at home and at work. At work, I would sometimes lose signal for a week (and no tech person on their end could fix it, other than the classic: “Have you tried restarting your computer?”). I still have it, and I paid for the modem straight out (which means there should be no fee whenever I do disconnect), but I’ll bet you every dollar the United States doesn’t have to pay its bills that they’ll try to tack on a disconnect fee, even though the disconnect fee is supposed to pay for the “great discount” I would have gotten on the equipment, which I paid full price for because they didn’t have a deal, and I really didn’t feel like renting their shit.

So, Sprint is now having trouble gaining new customers. You might think word of mouth might be their biggest problem. The woman who works in the next cubicle over from me has had nothing but nightmares with Sprint phones and service. I was on the shuttle bus going home from work last night, and two women started a chorus of how much Sprint sucks as they discussed their lousy phone service.

Now, this could be just in Grand Rapids, but I’m suspecting that if they’re screwing it up here, they’re probably screwing it up in a lot more places. Big companies are a lot like that. I’ve hated Comcast practically every city where I’ve had them, and I’ve had them in Grand Rapids, Stockton and a few other places that aren’t coming to my Alzheimerish mind right now.

Netflix is another one of those companies that doesn’t seem to get it. Oh, they think they do, and they’re all meta-like, acting like they’re on top of things with their knowledge of psychology and how people will eventually get over their price hikes, but rather than first telling their customers that the price of new content requires more money to pay for it, they just upped the price and pretty much told everyone to either live with it or leave, and then did this sanctimonious crap about how they’re the best deal in town so either live with it or stare at the walls in silence because they won’t have Netflix to watch instead.

This is NOT the way to treat your customers, especially the ones who stuck by you all of these years when you were growing and struggling to grow. Right now, I’m royally pissed at Netflix, and when September comes around I will cancel their services completely. Not drop down to the streaming only, or the disks only, but dump them completely like a cheating girlfriend who was never really good in bed in the first place. Okay, that’s a bit vulgar. How about: Like an ice cream flavor that doesn’t taste as good as…ah, never mind. Go with the first, vulgar one. It works well enough.

It’s almost as if major companies are less concerned about public relations and more concerned with handling damage control. And if your company’s focus is always how to minimize your negativity from customers, then something’s seriously wrong with your business model. My advice there is fire all of your executives, hire a bunch of kids who have watched a lot of Elmo on Sesame Street, and start over.