Dealing with Angry Online Mobs

BusinessWeek has a story on how companies deal with the electronic tidal waves of customer and employee displeasure they can receive. Whether emails, postings on major blogs, or videos catching unpleasant happenings (like rats running about a fast food establishment), the results can be brutal on reputation, and according to experts I've interviewed, there's a strong correlation between corporate reputation and how well the company's stock does.

Companies deal with the bad news in a number of ways. Some directly engage sources like bloggers, which may work for now, but not all will back down, and eventually they'll become inured to the lavished attention. What seems a smart move is to directly engage the broader range of discontent, like when Home Depot's new CEO apologized for the poor level of customer service his company offered customers, after an MSN Money column set off "10,000 angry e-mails and 4,000 posts, which took the company to task for pretty much everything."

But surely the company knew that it was letting people stand around without help. Why did the CEO wait until the dam of resentment burst? Posting a letter isn't enough in an age where customers are increasingly taking control of communications. Some companies are even trying to use services that promise to correct or "destroy" unwanted information. Perhaps warranted corrections can help, but trying to subvert honest opinion is bound to backfire. Look at the bad press that Wal-Mart got for how it works with bloggers, or that Microsoft received when sending out full laptops with its new operating system to influential technology bloggers.

I had two odd cases in my food blog, where comments about a product that I reviewed appeared days or even a week after the pieces originally ran. In both cases, the company knew that the review was there. And in both cases, some anonymous "user" started spouting off about the true value of the product in ways that were obviously marketing jargon. I eventually disabled comments - but only after I publicly wrote about how the comments appeared to me to be fake. So, when a mixed (or even largely positive) review isn't good enough, well, then, provoke something far more negative instead. Now that's bright.

Last year I wrote in Advertising Age about the phenomonon of customers having large megaphones (sorry, but I know of no available unpaid link). That trend is only going to increase. Companies would be wise to start operating as though people were watching over their shoulders and reporting on their every move - because they are and they can.