As a new blog, ComcastMustDie, has been set up by veteran NPR On The Media host and AdvertisingAge writer Bob Garfield.
Garfield writes:
"Actually, I have no deathwish for Comcast or any other gigantic, blundering, greedy, arrogant corporate monstrosity, What I do have is the earnest desire for such companies to change their ways. This site offers an opportunity -- for you to vent your grievances (civilly, please) and for Comcast to pay close attention.
Congratulations. You are no longer just an angry, mistreated customer. Nor, I hope, are you just part of an e-mob. But you are a revolutionary, wresting control from the oligarchs, and claiming it for the consumer. Your power is enormous. Use it wisely." (emphasis added)
In a separate post, he hits it out of the park, and echoes the reasons for the existence of The Social Customer Manifesto itself. Garfield:
"Partly because you [Comcast] have behaved so arrogantly till now, and partly because the world has changed around you, you now must answer to a Greater Power.
Us.
And we have demands:
1) You will recruit a standing panel of customers to consult, brainstorm, complain and advise you every step of the way -- from your customer-service practices, to your billing, to your programming content. This process, within the confines of protecting proprietary information, will be transparent.
2) You will host a website soliciting customer feedback of every kind. In other words, there will be the customer-delegate panel, and a mega-panel online. Don't sweat the flaming you will take. You will also get a) countless great ideas, b) a mechanism for locating and attending to hardcore customer-service issues, c) a vast increase in customer loyalty and goodwill, and d) a vast advantage in impressing potential customers. If you're smart, you will also cultivate a social network of TV watchers of all stripes who credit you for your hospitality.
3) Most importantly of all, you must recognize that none of this is PR move you have to make through gritted teeth in extremis. It is a golden opportunity to exploit the unprecedented potential of a connected world. How ironic. You've been stringing co-ax for decades, yet you don't even realize what you've wrought. Yes, that's right, you have created the very conditions for all of us to band together against you. At the moment it must seem like Frankenstein's monster, but take our word for it:
It's Comcastic!" (emphasis, again, added)
Juicy, crunchy, wonderful stuff. Go check it out.
Hat tip: Andy Sernovitz
On the other hand…
Id have done it more diplomatically (as I did when I launched the TypePad Hacks blog). It's easy to be mad, and to find a mob, and to rant. But when I put up 40 concrete suggestions for exactly how to improve the TypePad product and service, I got positive responses back from the company in less than a week. In the two years following, they rolled out updates that did at east half of what I had asked for (as well as getting more involved and responsive with their customer base). I wrote tutorials for hacks I invented to provide many of the missing features on the list. And in the end, everyone won.
What amazes me most, still, is that by setting a positive, get-things-done, diplomatic tone from the start I also managed to influence the tone of comments left on the blog. Only about .003% of comments (3 out of 1000) have ever been negative in tone, even when the commenter was frustrated or angry or confused.
In the case of "Comcast Must Die," Imagine if the initial salvo had been a well-researched list of actions that Comcast could use to endear itself and its services to users… Say that Garfield has instead built the site he envisions in his second demand and just given it away to Comcast, their users and the world.
Sure, there is the part where Garfield says: "you are no longer just an angry, mistreated customer. Nor, I hope, are you just part of an e-mob." But in order to get people not to act like a mob, you have to use a different line of approach, a different language, than "must die" "revolutionary" etc. Better to have posed the whole as a think tank for how best to solve the issues.
But hey, that's just my take. And, for the record, the entire telecom industry pisses me off pretty much daily. I'm hoping Google or something like massive redundant grassroots mesh networks will step in with service plans so amazing that the dinosaurs do, in fact, become extinct.
Posted by: John Unger | October 31, 2007 at 07:24 PM