In the Recommendation Age, quality rises to the surface.
Consumers more proficiently recognize and reward quality products and
service with positive, enthusiastic, and in some cases, relentless
feedback. The bad news is that even your quality product or service
could be destined to obscurity if you don’t soon understand the language
and culture of social media users and master the Laws of the Recommendation Age.
At the heart of doing business in the Recommendation Age are some hard realities we’ll be discussing in future chapters, such as:
· Transparency is key: Recommendations live online forever. A good one can generate new customers indefinitely; a bad one can linger in customers’ minds like a bad aftertaste. A bad recommendation is different from a bad review. A bad review is recoverable with proper care. A bad recommendation usually results from a customer concluding you don’t care. You must learn to operate in a transparent world without secrets that may come back later to bite you. Interaction with people about your brand must be real, authentic, and transparent.
· Play well with others: This goes for your relationships with consumers as well as competitors. Consumers enjoy a good, fair tennis match between competitors. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each. But most don’t like seeing it turn into a brawl with misrepresentations and cheap shots. As for relationships with consumers, brands and marketers can no longer shout through a bullhorn to a crowd that can’t respond back (as was the case with traditional, Information Age models). Today, everyone is at a party interacting. In the Recommendation Age we need to learn how to sit down and interact. If we try to use the bullhorn, we will either be ignored or be asked to leave.
· Quality counts: Having a quality product is still the most important factor in winning over customers. That will always remain near the bottom line. But to generate wide spread consumer confidence in your brand it has now become equally important to have good social media reviews and ratings for your product quality.
· Feedback runs the show: A good product—even the best—can be killed by bad recommendations and negative feedback. This can happen from the snowball effect of disgruntled customers if you don’t engage early on and be open and transparent.
· Face the fear—and the negativity: Companies have to get over their fear of people saying negative things about them and turn such feedback into opportunities. They must learn to be comfortable letting people speak their mind in an open forum and then they must respond honestly and helpfully.
· Turn pans into raves: One of the benefits of the Recommendation Age is hearing unvarnished reviews of your product, straight from the customer’s mouth. If you really care about quality and service, and after the shock of a bad reviews wears off, you can improve your product so it earns not only rave reviews for improved quality—but customer praise for your responsiveness.
· Be personal and authentic: Gone are the days of transaction simply meaning an exchange of goods for cash. Organizations must learn how to connect more deeply with customers and understand them better as individuals with wants and needs and less as sources of revenue.
The Recommendation Age is not necessarily about restructuring your entire company, tweaking your production line, or writing better ad copy or more SEO articles for your blog. It is about learning how to communicate with consumers more effectively, more simply, more realistically, and more often. If that sounds like a lot of new work it may well be for a while. But it will pay dividends in the form of better streamlining your customer service, greatly improving customer retention, and reducing lost revenues through returns and unresolved product failures. The problem is the old ways have created energy and resource waste for which the Recommendation Age is now providing an intelligent, long-term remedy.
By Bob Hutchins
http://buzzplant.com/
At the heart of doing business in the Recommendation Age are some hard realities we’ll be discussing in future chapters, such as:
· Transparency is key: Recommendations live online forever. A good one can generate new customers indefinitely; a bad one can linger in customers’ minds like a bad aftertaste. A bad recommendation is different from a bad review. A bad review is recoverable with proper care. A bad recommendation usually results from a customer concluding you don’t care. You must learn to operate in a transparent world without secrets that may come back later to bite you. Interaction with people about your brand must be real, authentic, and transparent.
· Play well with others: This goes for your relationships with consumers as well as competitors. Consumers enjoy a good, fair tennis match between competitors. It highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each. But most don’t like seeing it turn into a brawl with misrepresentations and cheap shots. As for relationships with consumers, brands and marketers can no longer shout through a bullhorn to a crowd that can’t respond back (as was the case with traditional, Information Age models). Today, everyone is at a party interacting. In the Recommendation Age we need to learn how to sit down and interact. If we try to use the bullhorn, we will either be ignored or be asked to leave.
· Quality counts: Having a quality product is still the most important factor in winning over customers. That will always remain near the bottom line. But to generate wide spread consumer confidence in your brand it has now become equally important to have good social media reviews and ratings for your product quality.
· Feedback runs the show: A good product—even the best—can be killed by bad recommendations and negative feedback. This can happen from the snowball effect of disgruntled customers if you don’t engage early on and be open and transparent.
· Face the fear—and the negativity: Companies have to get over their fear of people saying negative things about them and turn such feedback into opportunities. They must learn to be comfortable letting people speak their mind in an open forum and then they must respond honestly and helpfully.
· Turn pans into raves: One of the benefits of the Recommendation Age is hearing unvarnished reviews of your product, straight from the customer’s mouth. If you really care about quality and service, and after the shock of a bad reviews wears off, you can improve your product so it earns not only rave reviews for improved quality—but customer praise for your responsiveness.
· Be personal and authentic: Gone are the days of transaction simply meaning an exchange of goods for cash. Organizations must learn how to connect more deeply with customers and understand them better as individuals with wants and needs and less as sources of revenue.
The Recommendation Age is not necessarily about restructuring your entire company, tweaking your production line, or writing better ad copy or more SEO articles for your blog. It is about learning how to communicate with consumers more effectively, more simply, more realistically, and more often. If that sounds like a lot of new work it may well be for a while. But it will pay dividends in the form of better streamlining your customer service, greatly improving customer retention, and reducing lost revenues through returns and unresolved product failures. The problem is the old ways have created energy and resource waste for which the Recommendation Age is now providing an intelligent, long-term remedy.
By Bob Hutchins
http://buzzplant.com/
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