The reason for the share price melt down at Rentokil was covered in the Times Online today by Patrick Hosking.

If only the senior management team understood how to use the blogosphere to do a 'health check' on company brand reputation and customer satisfaction much of this could have been avoided...

This is a copy of the e-mail I sent to the journalist...

Patrick,

Pity the management did not have their service department or marketing team monitoring the blogosphere or they would have known immediately what was happening.

 As you say….

Rentokil’s failure to understand what was going on appears to be a serious indictment of its systems. It casts doubt on the quality of both its management information arrangements and its reporting lines.

How long does it take senior management to type its own company name into Google Alerts and see customer woes? How long does it take to contact a few of the disgruntled customers and get their stories first hand? How long does it take senior management to ask the City Link operations team for an explanation?

 No need to pay expensive marketing agencies to survey customers months after the fact. Read the full facts – praises and brickbats – from the ‘front line’ customers…

 To see where it was all going wrong they could have read these examples….read and weep as the very processes the management team set up to ‘improve service’ undermine it!

http://nathanmakan.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/city-link/

 http://forums.cclonline.com/showthread.php?t=8923

 http://www.angier.co.uk/david/2008-01-04-city-link-customer-service

 http://www.fsb.org.uk/discuss/forum_posts.asp?TID=490&PID=5043#5043