I was discussing customer relations with a few individuals recently and one comment caught my attention. Having purchased an item from a web site, they tried to engage the site owner in conversation about the product. Despite having only positive comments to make about the product, the owner really did not engage and left pretty quickly.
The reason I found it interesting was, first the public nature of the conversation and the lack of engagement, the second and more important, was the closing comment from the customer, which effectively was, “I won’t bother buying from them again”.
Online reputations can be severely damaged from a simple act like this. The customer felt brushed off, everyone else who witnessed the conversation felt the same. Being a forum, this conversation is similar to a permanent record. It is still there for people to read today and will no doubt appear in search results at some time into the future.
Has the site owner come back and made amends. They have come back, but not to make amends, only to continue to promote them. Where they had been included in a lot of conversations, they now find themselves ignored. Over time, people will forget. Some people will leave and new people will arrive. However, for many online businesses, time is not a luxury. Lost sales now can make a big difference, particularly if you were building momentum.
Reputations can be won and lost when engaging an online community. Every care needs to be taken to ensure that customers and customers are not treated poorly. We cannot spend 24 hours a day promoting ourselves. There are times when you have to leave a site, however, when that happens it only takes a moment to thank people and give a brief goodbye. If someone has tried to engage you, let them know when you will be back so you can pick up the conversation.
One simple act of rudeness, probably unintentional, may have caused a great deal of damage to this person’s reputation. If you are going to engage in social networking, make sure you do engage – don’t do it halfhearted or with purely selfish interests.
