This isn’t exactly a new development in social media, but a few examples of it have caught my attention lately. It seems more and more people are taking their customer service complaints public via social networks.
At the time this post was written, this pic had 3,289 diggs and counting.
Comcast isn’t exactly known for it’s great customer service, but I thought this was just plain funny.
In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.
The first installment (shown above) has gotten over 3.1 million views on YouTube. Two of those were me.
It seems that, at very least, taking a complaint social can draw some attention to the issue. At what point do you decide to do this? And, does it accomplish anything?
A few year’s back, I had a laptop I purchased from Best Buy. I took it in for a small fix covered by the warranty, but when I got it back, they had created a new problem. For the next 2.5 years, I took into back to the Geek Squad with some frequency. Each visit brought a new excuse (and by the way, a different reported cause for the problem which kept them from having to write my notebook off and replace it). It was during this same time period that Best Buy was sued for not honoring their service plans (I was aware of the lawsuit, but did not pursue it in hopes of getting my computer fixed). I wonder what, if anything, would have been different about the outcome of those events if I had taken the fight public?
How does it make you feel that people take their complaints to YouTube, Digg and Twitter. Should churches worry? How do you think this will effect the public at large? Will companies be held more accountable?
Came across an article by Scott Berkun (via CollideMagazine.com) berating social media for over-hype and and the proliferation of noise. And it hurt (a little). Scott makes some excellent points and his post is worth reading for anyone invested in social media.
But, for all its woes and shortcomings, there are two things that make today’s social media important. Its interactivity and its real-timeness. Scott acknowledges the first of these, but I believe the real power of this “movement” lies in the freshly broken ground of real time. Twitter has always existed here, but now Facebook has joined them. OneRiot allow us to search in real time. Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and Flickr all have real time Meta searches. Real time makes social media!
I would be more surprised if newspapers weren’t such tired dinosaurs that have been teetering on the verge of extinction for years. They were so late to the internet game. Even later on social media. They have been clinging onto a dead business model for dear life. At this point, it seems their only chance for survival rests in an endless stream of bailouts and government intervention (which doesn’t exactly bode well for their integrity, not to mention long-term viability).
So, what does this mean for the church?
First, we cannot hold onto traditional methods of communication. I know if is so cliched and overplayed, but we cannot be married to methods. Too often I hear, “we can’t do it that way, because [fill in the blank with appropriate minority of staunch opponents to progress] won’t buy into that.” Life and all that is good is quickly leaving them behind. We will be left behind if we let “them” (whoever they may be) dictate what we do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we leave “them” behind. I’m just suggesting that we don’t let them hold us back.
Second, stewardship is crucial. Without getting lost in the details, these social media communication models are much more efficient (not to mention cheaper). In many cases, this is why traditional models can’t keep up; they aren’t cost effective.
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